


Stained in the Blood (of a whole generation)

by Ardatli



Category: Criminal Minds, Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe – No Powers, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, F/M, Gen, Jonas and Nate are conflated, M/M, Minor Character Death, background canon relationships, but nothing’s timey-wimey., fire as a weapon, maturity warning is for violence, not exactly a fix-it, this is not a kissing book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-17 00:08:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardatli/pseuds/Ardatli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No-powers, modern AU crossover. </p><p>A string of brutal deaths brings the FBI’s vaunted Behavioural Analysis Unit to New York City on the trail of a serial arsonist. But when the UnSub appears to target a young man named William Kaplan, it becomes clear that nothing at all is what it seems...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I owe everything to my elite squad of betas: **roane** , for Criminal Minds flailing and general structural work, **moonbrightnites** for prose wrangling and whip-cracking, and **frogy** for Young Avengers/NYC fact-checking and general awesomeness. Thank you all so much! All remaining mistakes are mine, and are despite their very best efforts. 
> 
> _Stained in the Blood_ is set in Spring of 2008, placing it in mid-late third season for Criminal Minds. It could be read as taking place about four months after _The List_ , though there are no references to that story in this. 
> 
> This is a WIP, but a fully-planned one (the ending's already written). I aim to update once a week, and we'll see how it goes. Projected length is about 45k.
> 
> Work title is from the song "Children's Crusade," by Sting.

**2 AM Friday, Springfield, NJ:**

_Forty-two._ Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Dr. Milton would be so proud. _Forty-three._ In. Hold. Out. The breathing exercises helped, but didn’t stop the endless drumming of fingers against thigh, the ache in his bones that burned to become movement. _Forty-four._ Holding still hurt, the vibrations rolling through his spine, arms, legs, fingers, tap-tap-tapping code that should be Morse but wasn’t. He’d never had the patience to memorize the patterns. A car door slammed somewhere nearby. _Forty-five._

Focus on the world, on the tamped-down padding of the ancient sleeping bag under him, the ridges of the wooden floor impressing themselves on his shoulder blades, rough and familiar. He’d dragged it up to the treehouse years ago, squirreled down inside it to lock out the sounds of fighting from the house below. Focus on the smell of peroxide, lingering and acrid, clear and clean. It had – say it together now – seemed like a good idea at the time, the brown hair the only thing in the mirror that looked like them. Erase the brown, that had been the impulse. Erase the link, make himself as different from Frank and Mary on the outside as he was on the inside.

 _No son of mine..._ that had been Frank’s response when he saw it, the white hair falling to flop over Tommy’s brow. And hell, dear old not-dad had been right about that, at least.

_Forty-six._

The house was quiet now, the shouting done for the night, the lights off. The night closed in, save for the tap-tap-tap of his fingers, the creak of tree branches in the light wind, the footsteps of a late-night walker passing on the sidewalk and the susurration of his breath. _Forty-seven._

He should eat. The meds had worn off and he could feel the foreign coils of hunger twist around inside. The peanut butter was mostly full and he still had thirteen slices of plastic-wrapped cheese and a six of cola, one can half-empty. It was something to do other than lie here in the dark and count the minutes ticking by.

_Forty-eight._

Tap tap tap on his thigh, his fingers grazed over the lump in his pocket, hard and smooth beneath the denim. He dug in and fished it out, the ragged edge of his nail catching on the threads, the metal warm in his hand from his own heat. He turned it over, the rectangular heft of it solid in his palm. He traced the engraving with the pads of his fingers, not needing light to know what it said. ‘To Frank, love Mary,’ in that shitty mall-booth curlicue font.

_Forty-nine._

He flicked the lighter. Flame jumped from his fingers, a burst of light against the black.

Doors opened and closed down below; they were awake. They’d notice him gone, soon. He should have gone farther. He was seventeen; they probably wouldn’t come after him this time. One backpack was enough to hold the things he wanted to keep. The rest could burn, for all he cared.

The flame licked in the lighter, and the metal rim was hot under his thumb, hot enough to blister. He dropped it with a curse and stuck his thumb in his mouth to soothe the reddened skin.

_Fifty._

The sky outside went red. Red, and orange and white and hot. Flames leaped against the black, sparks exploding up from the house below to mingle with the stars. The smell of smoke drowned out the edge of bleach.

He stopped counting.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein we meet our casts, and nothing at all makes sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to my betas - I have a whole team on this one! **roane** , for Criminal Minds-ing and pacing notes, **moonbrightnites** for making this coherent and hacking my writing apart with a machete, and **frogy** for YA-ing and NYC nitpicking. Any mistakes after all that are mine, and are really inexcusable.

_“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”_

_\-- Mitch Albom_

**Chapter 1**

**6:30 am Friday, Offices of the FBI Behavioural Analysis Unit, Quantico, VA:**

“She dumped you because her sister didn’t like you?” Emily Prentiss’ astonished voice held more than a hint of laughter as she climbed the stairs to the conference room. Somehow, it shouldn’t be surprising. Sometimes it seemed like Morgan set himself up for things like this simply by breathing.

“I think you have to have more than one date before it counts as ‘dumping,’ don’t you?” Reid asked from the back of the pack. This time, Emily snickered.

The BAU offices were coming to life, murmurs from the bullpen below blending with the creaks of their feet on the stairs, the buzzing of computers and fluorescent lights. The cup of coffee was warm in her hand and she gave in to temptation at the top of the stairs, pausing to take a sip.

Morgan sighed and shook his head. “Nice to know you have my back, Reid. And not just her sister – her twin. They’re close. She decided I was a dog, and I never got the chance to get a word in.”

“You didn’t hit on both of them, did you?” Emily stood aside to let the guys pass her, her eyes alight. “In that case, she wouldn’t be wrong.” Morgan just pressed his hand to his heart and looked at her with eyes not nearly as wounded as he wanted her to believe.

“Twins are actually a very common fantasy,” Reid said as he passed them, heading for the conference room door. “While there haven’t been any studies directly considering the prevalence-“

“I dated twins once,” Rossi cut in. “Inadvertently.” He sat down in his usual chair to the right of the door and took a drink from his mug. Emily sat down across from him, skimming the board as she did so. Burned bodies, charred houses; this was going to be a messy one.

“And-?” Prentiss asked, one eyebrow raised in question. JJ finished hanging photographs on the board and looked back over her shoulder at the conversation in progress.

The door opened one last time, then closed behind Hotch with a certain amount of deference. Emily felt the urge to sit up a little straighter, and only barely resisted.  

Rossi smirked and leaned back in his chair. “And that’s all I’ll say.”

“Come on, man. You can’t leave us hanging with a setup like that,” Morgan objected.

“Are we ready to begin?” Hotch cut in, settling into his chair at JJ’s nod. Morgan took his seat between Prentiss and Reid, shaking his head at the laughter in Prentiss’ eyes.

JJ took up the conversation, gesturing to the board behind her. It was filled with images of burnt-out shells of houses, and seven corpses, charred beyond recognition. “Over the past four months, a series of house fires have killed eleven people in New York state. The last two have been in New York City itself. Five hours ago,” JJ nodded at the board, “the home of Bryce and Jessica Weston. The homeowners were found in the living room, bound. They were so badly burned that dental records were needed to make the identification.”

“A serial arsonist over such a wide geographic area?” Reid leaned forward and rested his arms on the table as he peered at the images. “Usually arsonists focus on properties in their immediate surroundings, as targets for revenge, or from a lack of impulse control. Within five square miles, at most.”

“How do they know it’s the same guy?” Morgan frowned, tapping his pen against his ankle where it was propped up on his knee.

“It’s the UnSub’s signature,” Hotch replied. “The fires were set inside the house, using methyl alcohol as an accelerant and a fault in the house’s own electrical system as the ignition. All of the victims were bound before the house was lit up.”

“But not killed,” Prentiss supplied.

“No. Smoke inhalation in the lungs proves it. All of the victims were burned alive.”

Rossi swivelled his chair to get a better look. “Any evidence of torture prior to death?”

“Nothing found,” JJ shook her head. “There may be something new on the latest victims; the local coroner is still processing the bodies.”

“This doesn’t seem like the work of a classical sadist,” Morgan frowned. “At least based on the victimology. We’ve got multiple races, ages and sexes involved here; everything from a single woman through to a family of five.”

“But not class,” Rossi pointed out. “A lawyer, a social worker, a government administrator – the victims were all professionals. It’s not likely to be a sexual fantasy, with that cross-section, but could it be class resentment?”

“Then why go all the way upstate to find victims, when you have all of New York to pick from?” Morgan asked, cocking his head.

Hotch’s brow creased just a little bit further. “Garcia’s working on the victimology right now. She’ll update us if she finds any connections between them.” He closed his folder. “Wheels up in thirty.” 

 

**7:30 am Friday, Upper West Side, New York, NY:**

“Daaaaaaad, he’s got my shoes-“

“Give me back my baseball mitt!”

“Why? It’s not like you have any friends to play with anyway, dumb-butt-“

“Don’t you call your brother names, young man-“

Billy slammed his notebook closed and jammed it into his backpack. He’d have a better chance of finishing the problem set at school than in the middle of the chaos that was breakfast with his two younger brothers. It was a little quieter in the hallway; it gave him a chance to regroup, find his history textbook (why and how did it end up on top of the lamp?) and ... shoes. One on the mat where it was supposed to be, and one... not.

“Hello, good morning, you two – knock it off.” His mother blew through the kitchen and into the hall at about a hundred miles an hour, sliding her arms into her blazer and her feet into her shoes. Billy’s dad pressed a travel mug of coffee into her hand, wiping his own hands down on his apron. “Thank you.”

Billy was on his hands and knees trying to get his second shoe out from under the credenza when she passed by and ruffled his hair affectionately. “Eat your toast, Billy. A good breakfast is vital for proper learning. There have been studies. Goodbye, I love you, I’ll see you all tonight.”

“Bye, mom-“ she opened the door and jumped back instead of bustling down the stairs, and Billy grinned at the sight of the blond boy standing with one hand raised in a fist as though about to knock, his eyes widening with surprise.

“Good morning, Ted,” his mother’s voice was warm with affection. She slipped around him rather than wait for him to move, and headed down the stairs.

“Morning, Dr. Kaplan,” Teddy half-turned to watch her go, then stepped inside and held a warm, strong hand out for Billy to grab onto as he jammed his feet into his sneakers. “What’s her rush?”  

“There’s some big deal case they’re working on right now; the FBI are sending a task force in today. I overheard her talking to dad about it last night.” He wished he knew more than that; not because he needed to impress Teddy, not at this stage, but purely for his own curiosity’s sake. It wasn’t like his mom’s job was all that interesting. Ninety percent of the time she interviewed people who wanted to be cops. The rest was talking people who already _were_ cops off of ledges after things went south. That ten percent was the reason she was up nights, sometimes, her voice and his dad’s reduced to low murmurings in the kitchen. But this was different. “Hang on. Dad!-“ Billy turned and called back over his shoulder. “Teddy’s here; I’m going.”

“Have a good day, boys,” his father’s voice echoed out from the kitchen and Teddy held the door for Billy as they headed for the brownstone’s front stairs.

“The FBI? Seriously? Woah.” Teddy jumped down the last couple of steps and waited for Billy at the bottom. The morning sun glinted off the dozen silver hoops and cuffs that ringed his ears, made his hair shine golden. Billy could seriously just stare at him all day. “...they only bring the FBI in for the really big stuff, like... slave trafficking. I saw this show once where Mexican immigrants were being smuggled across state lines in the bottoms of 18-wheelers...” Teddy trailed off and frowned at Billy, who’d fallen a little bit behind. “What? Do I have something on my face?”

“Hunh, what?” Oh yeah; super-intelligent, Kaplan.

Teddy grinned, a smile like the sun breaking. “You’re staring, Bee.”

“Like looking at you,” Billy felt the heat of the flush rising up his cheeks and the answering smile tugging at his mouth. He took a couple of steps to catch up, realized that Teddy was leaning in for a kiss- “hang on,” Billy shook his head and pushed Teddy down the block until they could turn the corner, out of sight of the house. “Mrs. Moskowitz is back from Florida.”

There was a flash of hurt in Teddy’s eyes. “I thought you decided you were going to come out to them?” He crowded Billy back against the wall as they rounded the corner and braced his arms on either side. Billy glanced around, just to be sure, then slid his hand up to clasp the back of Teddy’s neck and tug him down for a kiss. Teddy tasted like mint toothpaste, with a hint of those awful protein shakes that his mom made for him every morning. Not, Billy considered, resting his arm on Teddy’s decidedly more muscular one, that he could complain about the end results.

“I did. I am,” he stalled. “But _I_ want to do it, not get ratted out by a voyeuristic busybody of a neighbour.”

Teddy nodded. “Fair enough.” He claimed another kiss, his lips dry and a little chapped, and Billy leaned up to follow his mouth when he pulled back the second time. Teddy adjusted his backpack on his shoulder and started walking again. “Have you thought about how you’re going to tell them?”

Billy groaned. “I dunno. It’ll have to be somewhere with distractions,” he said firmly, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Maybe I can pay off the brats to break something on cue. Because you know my parents; you know exactly how this is gonna go,” he gave Teddy a pained look. “I’m just so _thrilled,_ ” he imitated his mother’s voice with a shrill falsetto, “that our relationship is _actualized_ enough that you feel safe _confiding_ in me, William.” Teddy laughed. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re not wrong,” Teddy admitted, “but it is kind of sweet. Your folks love you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Billy sighed, folding his arms behind his head and stretching. “I just wish sometimes they could do it a little less... therapeutically.”

Teddy just snorted. “You don’t know when you have it good, Kaplan.”

Billy dropped his arms and grabbed for Teddy’s hand, laced their fingers together when Teddy didn’t resist. “I’ve got it pretty good right now,” he offered up as an apology, and got a squeeze in return. “What about your mom?”

“I have a feeling she knows,” Teddy confessed, looking sheepish. Billy’s surprise must have been immediately apparent, because he kept explaining. “She gets this twitch when your name comes up, like she’s trying not to smile. Plus, Captain America boxers.”

“Those could so have been yours,” Billy muttered, his face red again. “We wear the same size.”

Teddy leered at him and squeezed his hand again.

“What does she think of me?” Billy ventured after a moment. There was absolutely no question that his parents adored _Ted_ – at least, they did right now, when they thought Ted was his best friend. It remained to be seen what would happen when they found out that he was a whole lot more.

“Mom? She adores you,” Teddy dismissed the question. He arched an eyebrow a second later and grinned. “Barring your occasional descent into unfounded neurosis, what’s not to love?” He pulled Billy in closer, looped an arm around Billy’s neck, and pressed a kiss against his temple. Billy leaned into Teddy’s warmth and the feel of his lips against Billy’s skin, and-

Their bus drove by and Billy yelped with alarm. “Crap! We’ll be late for homeroom.” Conversation forgotten, FBI forgotten, the two boys raced down the street towards the bus stop, bags and jackets flying behind them.  

 

 **10:00 am, Friday, 19 th Precinct, New York**:

Some of the others might joke about how police departments blended into each other after a while, how the mix of types changed up but the overall feel didn’t, but JJ could never bring herself to agree. The bad paint jobs and worse coffee might be universal, but the people were always new. The way each group merged and blended, each new mix of personalities and pressure points to be managed, cajoled, deployed for her own purposes- She wasn’t a profiler, had never wanted that job. _This_ was her playground.

The 19th precinct was superficially similar to the other NYPD precincts they’d worked with before. The captain – fit, mid-forties, Black, wore his off-the-rack suit like it was a dress uniform – welcomed them with a grim smile. “Glad you could make it here so soon, agents. I’m Captain Oliver.”

“Aaron Hotchner, Jennifer Jareau, our communications liaison,” Hotch replied just as grimly.

“We spoke on the phone.” JJ shook Oliver’s hand, followed his gaze back to where the rest of the team was following them into the building.

“I wish we’d been able to get you in on this sooner,” Oliver continued, once the group had gathered and he was able to lead them down the hallway and past the desk sergeant. “We didn’t manage to connect the dots until yesterday.”

“We’re here now,” JJ said, more for form’s sake than anything else.

“We’ve got a room set up for you here,” Oliver pushed open the glass door to a repurposed meeting room and glanced at JJ for her approval. That was always a good sign at the outset; he was taking her seriously, which should have been a given.

Then there was the room – a table long enough for spreading out files, printer, corkboard, coffee machine; she ran it against the list in her head and came up satisfied. “This will be fine, captain.” JJ turned an approving smile on for him as the rest of the team made their way in, a uniformed officer bringing up the rear.

“Blake Burdick,” Oliver introduced the tall man, who nodded to the team. Burdick’s gaze flickered quickly over each of them in turn, and his shoulders settled as a little tension ebbed. He was relieved that they were there; another good sign. “Officer Burdick was first on the scene yesterday after the fire department; he can answer any questions you have.”

“Anything you need,” Burdick agreed, scrubbing one hand across the back of his neck. He was older than the captain, closer to Rossi’s age than anyone else, and had the settled and weary air of a uniform lifer.

Hotch didn’t hesitate. “Everything you have on the current case.” Reid had already started to unpack his bag, files accumulating on the tabletop. “Morgan and Reid, to the most recent crime scene. Prentiss, I want you with me in the files. JJ, arrange meetings with any members of the victims’ families who are in town. We need to flesh out the victimology if we’re going to understand what’s going on here.”

“I’ll drive you over,” Burdick offered, leaning back behind JJ to direct his words to the guys.

“Rebecca Kaplan is our staff psych,” Oliver continued. “She’s in with Jessica Weston’s mother right now. The woman is a mess.”

“We’ll speak with both of them. I’d like to get Doctor Kaplan’s impressions. Rossi?”

“On it.”

 

 **10:45 am, Friday, Weston residence, New York** :

The shell of the house was still wet from the early-morning hosedown. _Water at a maximum of 290 psi from the crosslay hoses over ten minutes to put out the fire, include deluge gun use, becomes approximately 960 gallons of liquid at an evaporation rate corrected for elevated temperature-_ It would be three days at least before the wood and brick would be dry again, assuming that the current weather system held. Unlikely at best, given standard weather patterns for New York in the spring. Frowning, Reid followed Burdick and Morgan under the yellow caution tape and approached the scene.

The arson team was still working their careful way through the house, orange and yellow evidence tags highlighting the trail of their meticulous progress. Their team lead was a petite woman who Burdick introduced as Lieutenant Marconi. Reid stayed back while Morgan shook her hand, gave her a tight nod and a half-hearted wave.

“The fire started in the kitchen,” she began as they picked their way between evidence markers and charred floorboards marked as stable. “And spread to the rest of the house from there. It went up quickly; even if the family hadn’t been bound, I don’t know if they would have had time to get out.”

Morgan turned, scanned the room, the layout, the calculating look in his eyes familiar. “He had access to the house, not just the downstairs. You found accelerant upstairs?”

“Up the stairs, along the hallway, splashed just inside the door of every bedroom. He was thorough.”

 “The bodies were found in the living room?” Reid asked, pacing back and forth along the hallway between the kitchen and living room to gauge the space, what the UnSub would have seen, felt, smelled – correction. Smell was not an accurate indicator at this point, the cling of ash and acrid smoke overlaying everything in a thick blanket of entropy. “So he wakes them up, brings them downstairs, why? Why not kill them in their beds?”

“Because that’s not part of the fantasy,” Morgan suggested, touching a tipped-over cabinet with gloved hands. “The floor’s wet where this should have been. It didn’t get knocked over by the fire crew; this was dumped before the fire started. He ransacked the place; he was looking for something and got angry when he didn’t find it.”

Burdick had been watching them, still and steady in the doorway, but that declaration made him come into the room and engage. “You keep saying ‘he.’” He dropped to one knee and eyeballed a scorch mark that had been flagged with an evidence tag. “How do you know? Maybe it was a crazy ex-girlfriend?”

“Statistically speaking,” Reid didn’t need to pause to think, the facts unfolding behind his eyes the moment he needed them, pages of a mental book turning and splaying open for him. “Most serial arsonists are young white males. Fifty-eight point seven percent of fires are set by offenders before they reach eighteen, and seventy-nine point seven percent before twenty-nine. The typical young arsonist has an unstable family life, typified by divorce, abuse, chaotic relationships, and frequent geographical relocation. Seventy-one percent have a prior criminal record, and less than a third have steady employment.”

Burdick was staring at him, so was Marconi, and Morgan was having a hard time fighting back a smile. Pride, Reid might have called the expression if he was being optimistic, but it was just as likely to be irritation.

“So we’re looking for an unemployed white teenager from a broken home?” Burdick grimaced. “Doesn’t narrow things down much.”

“Other facts don’t lend themselves to that interpretation.” It was lurking just out of reach, the piece that would make this puzzle fit together in clean and elegant lines, logic puzzle solved. “The geographical profile doesn’t fit. Arsonists of the frustrated-teen type don’t transition between locations.”

“So it’s a kid with a car,” Burdick replied. Morgan moved back through to the kitchen and stepped onto a chair that was near to the disassembled ceiling light fixture. He poked at it with the end of his pen, the wires dangling _black, white, green for ground, household current of 110 would be enough to spark, light, ignite-_

“In that case we would expect to see unsophisticated methods for setting the fire, accelerant of opportunity,” Morgan said. “Fixtures like this are designed with safeties to prevent accidental fires; he knew what he was doing when he took this apart. I think we’re looking for an adult. One who knows wiring, and has access to methanol. That’s not a common household substance.”

Marconi folded her arms in front of her and nodded. “Sounds like you’re talking about a general contractor.”

Morgan dropped back down to the floor with easy grace. “Did the Westons have work done recently? That could have given our UnSub access to the house beforehand to case it out. I’ll call Garcia.”

“You realize that there are over twenty-two thousand general contractors in New York alone?” Reid cocked his head. “Garcia’s going to be pissed.”

“That’s why _I’m_ calling her, pretty boy. I can take the heat.” Morgan chuckled, shook his head and flipped open his phone, heading for the door. “Hey there, sexy mama. I have a question for you…”

 

**1:00 pm Friday, Bronx High School of Science, NY:**

“Pass me the soldering iron.”

“Are you sure about this?” Eli did it anyway, staring at the project laid out in bits and pieces on their shared lab bench. Wires trailed off and coiled around power supplies and boards laid in haphazard piles. He took advantage of Jonas’ distraction to sort a handful of LEDs back into the appropriate colour piles.

“Of course I’m sure,” Jonas replied with an air of supreme confidence. “Your problem is that you’re never sure. Even when you should be.”

Eli scowled at him – because really, what did Jonas actually know about anything? He was lucky he had Eli to stop him from walking into walls half the time, the kid was that out of it. “I’m _sure_ that you’re doing that wrong,” he pointed out. “It’s going to short circuit.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. And you’re wrong.”

“Your _face_ is wrong.”

“Your _mother_ is-“

“Gentlemen,” Mr. Mustoe rapped his knuckles on their desk as he passed by, his white lab coat spotted here and there with streaks of what looked like ink, a handful of tidy burn holes dotting the front panels. “A little more focus on the lab and less on theoretical geneaology, hm?”

“Yessir,” the two boys chorused, Eli’s jaw set. Jonas looked up and blinked owlishly through the safety goggles.

The silence in the physics teacher’s wake lasted all of a minute and a half. “Cassie says that Kate says that you guys aren’t talking. Again.”

“What are you, gossip central? You’re worse than the girls.” And the last thing he wanted to talk about was not-talking. Not-talking to Kate, especially. Speaking of someone who wasn’t sure what she wanted. ‘I need time’ was like ‘you’re so cute.’ Girl-code for ‘you’re nice, but you will never see me naked.’

See: conversations he was never having with Jonas.

“Swap that one out for the blue one,” Eli said, stabbing a finger at the circuit board under Jonas’ hands and pulling out the assignment sheet from his binder.

“Nu-unh. Don’t be stupid. Call her, grovel, whatever.”

“Not a chance. She knows my number, she can – the blue one!”

“This will work.”

Jonas connected the leads before Eli could grab them out of his hands. There was a flash, a loud pop sound that didn’t bode well _at all_ , followed by a burst of brilliant green flame and a hit of ozone and burning-electronics smell just to make his day _that much_ better.

The flame vanished before Mr. Mustoe could spray them down with the extinguisher that he was wielding like a weapon, and Eli buried his face in his hands with a groan.

The circuit board blinked its remaining LEDs in a cheerful pattern.

“Hunh, what do you know?” was Jonas’ only contribution.

The bell rang.

“So,” Jonas continued, oblivious to Eli’s pained expression. “Diner after school?”

“I need to go by the library and get my work schedule for next week,” Eli ran through his list of options – home to Grandma and homework alone, or cheeseburgers with Jonas, Billy and Teddy, and the strong possibility of having to punch all of them for bringing up the Kate thing again.

On the other hand, cheeseburgers.

“Yeah. I’ll meet you there.”

 

**3 pm Friday, 19 th Precinct, New York:**

Five hours in and the table was piled high with paper and the board in the far corner covered with notes and photographs. The detritus of lunch - boxes, chopsticks, packets of soy sauce - sat in the middle of it all. Aaron Hotchner watched Rebecca Kaplan’s expressions and her hands while she spoke, her sincerity and intensity impressing itself on him with every tightly-controlled gesture. “But other than that,” she concluded, passing Hotch the file folder containing notes from her morning’s interviews, “I don’t think there’s anything directly relevant.”

Hotch turned the folder over in his hands, flicked his thumb across the edges of the white pages tucked neatly inside, each tabbed and labelled. “We’ll be the judges of that; even small details can be extremely useful. Thank you for this.”

“If there’s anything else, just let me know.” She stood at his nod and left, as briskly and efficiently as ever.

“This has to be it.” Prentiss entered in a flurry of movement and Hotch looked up, Rossi and JJ mirroring his motion. Burdick trailed in behind her and let the door close. “Alice Brooksley, the third victim?” She brandished a printout with a look of triumph. “Her work history finally came in. From 1985 to 1992, she was an administrator at the Creche, an adoption agency in New Jersey. And unless I miss my guess, that’s the same time period that Cheung and Loyola were also affiliated.”

Morgan was already in motion, searching through the stacks of files until he had the reports he needed, victims of the first and fourth fires staring up at Hotch when Morgan flipped the folders open. “You’re dead on, Prentiss. There are three years of overlap between all of them – 1988 to 1991. You think?”

“I think,” she agreed. Hotch tamped down the surge of hope – it was too soon to let himself believe that they’d found the key, but... He hit 5 on his speed dial and waited for the connection.

It took less than two rings before the line engaged with a click and a familiar warm voice greeted him. “Font of all knowledge, speak and be recognized.” Burdick cocked his head at the informal answer, and smiled slightly when none of the team reacted.

“Garcia,” the corners of his mouth tugged up, just for a split second. “You’re on speaker. Run a search for any other fires associated with former employees of the Creche adoption agency, based out of New Jersey. Relevant years of employment are 1988 through 1991, but keep the search broader than that.”

“I will have that for you in two shakes, oh captain my captain,” Garcia answered, and he could already hear her fingers dancing over her keyboard as she spoke. He put the phone down on the table and glanced up at the rest of his team to gauge their reactions.

“Who’d want to kill social workers and administrators?” JJ was musing aloud, her face clouded.

“An adopted kid with resentment issues?” Rossi suggested, leaning back in his chair and toying with his pen. “Or one who didn’t get placed. Abuse happens in foster homes. Some of that housing is unfortunately prime territory for already damaged kids to get worse, not better.”

Garcia was back on the line before Hotch could reply, with her usual bubbling and infectious excitement.

“None for former employees, sir, but I widened the search on a hunch, and I did get a hit on a set of adoptive parents. A fire in Springfield, New Jersey, about four months ago. The family house burned down, same MO as our guy.”

Hotch stared at the board and let the images rearrange themselves in his mind’s eye to fit the new information. “Why wasn’t that case included in our files?”

There was the distant sound of a click, and then Garcia’s voice once more. “Because nobody died. At first the local PD thought that it was the son who’d set the fire – he’s, oh, here. He’s got a juvie record, mostly petty stuff, some vandalism, but they weren’t able to link him to the fire itself. No physical evidence except for his presence at the scene, but since it was – you know – his own house, that was hardly enough.”

“Where is the family now?” Prentiss braced her hands on the table and leaned in, directing her question towards the phone.

“Emily, my dove! Frank and Mary Shepherd have… separated, and are filing for divorce. I have addresses for both of them, emailing them to Hotch now, along with the juvenile court records. Oh, _ouch_.”

Now what? “What is it, Garcia?” Hotch asked, before she could continue.

“The Shepherds have a second court action in the works; they’re filing for dissolution of the adoption, citing ‘undisclosed mental health issues’ as their reason.”

The reaction from his team was about what Hotchner expected, winces and frowns. Burdick was more impassive, thoughtful. “And the boy?”

“Thomas Shepherd, all of seventeen. His… here. His birth mother is one Wanda Lehnsherr, moved to the United States from Germany in 1986.”

“Did she just unseal sealed adoption records?” Burdick reacted, looking at Hotch as though expecting him to be just as startled, or appalled. He would learn.

“It’s ok, sugar; I’ll put them back exactly the way I found them when we’re done,” came the cheerful response from the other end of the line. “It says here that she was admitted to in-patient care already pregnant, suffering from extreme depression, suicidal ideation and -“ Garcia lost the jovial tone to her voice, a flat affect creeping in. “And paranoid delusions. She remained in hospital until the end of her pregnancy, at which point her twin sons were taken as wards of the state and she was transferred to the Carrier Clinic in Belle Mead, New Jersey, for long-term care.”

Reid was sitting forward now, his elbows digging into the table surface and his fingers tightly clenched. “Delusions; what kind of delusions? Anything involving fire?"

"No. It says here that when asked to identify the father, she claimed that her babies had been fathered by an alien robot."

Burdick blinked. "That's a new one."

"Not really,” Reid loosened his fingers deliberately, forcing blood back into them as he rubbed his hands together. “Dissociation fantasies are common methods of grappling with conflict; when the conscious mind is unable to cope with some or all facets of reality, the unconscious mind can generate fantasies that return a sense of control. Everyone does it to a certain extent; in a healthy person, we call it daydreaming. It’s when the person is no longer able to distinguish reality from fantasy that we consider it pathological. Robot sex is more commonly a male fantasy, incorporating the removal of agency from the sexual partner, but there was a case in New Mexico about ten years ago where a local woman claimed that she was in a polyandrous marriage with four extraterrestrials-”

And this would be the point where Hotch was going to need to take control back before everything dove off the rails. “Thank you, Reid,” he held up his hand to cut off the tumbling flow of words, nodded at Rossi. “Loss of control; that’s a common factor in arson cases as well. The mother has hallucinations; what are the chances that her sons do as well?”

“Garcia,” JJ spoke up. “You said there were twins. But only one of them was adopted by the Shepherds?”

“That is correct!” Garcia replied. “The Shepherds adopted Thomas, and his brother went to a family in New York City.”  

 “The name?” Hotch requested.

"William. Adopted sixteen years ago by Jeff and Rebecca Kaplan."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet the Shepherds, boys are ridiculous, and a profile starts to come together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love, so much love, to roane, frogy and moonbrightnites. 
> 
> We haven't seen the Shepherds on-panel in YA yet, so have some headcanon. (I'm going to get Jossed on this so hard, someday.)

**Chapter Two:**

**3:30 pm Friday, 19 th Precinct, New York:**

 It wasn't difficult to profile Dr. Kaplan, even though Prentiss had only been introduced to the in-house psychiatrist a few hours before. Professional, driven, passionate about her work and, judging by the way she carefully aligned the paper clips on the case files in front of her, meticulous. At least when under stress. And right now, she was definitely stressed.  
  
"Yes, we went through the Creche to adopt Billy," Dr. Kaplan answered Emily's question, her eyes flickering to Hotch, sitting with them at the table. "But not our other two. And Billy knows he's adopted, but we've never made a distinction between him and our biological children." She raised her chin and stared the profilers down, daring them to contradict her. "He's a bright, well-adjusted young man."  
  
"That's not in question, Dr. Kaplan," Hotch soothed. He was better at the ‘we're-all-parents-together’ routine than Emily was, despite appearances, and it was always interesting to watch him work it. Kaplan frowned, but settled back in her chair. "We're more interested in anything you can tell us about the agency, why it might be a target. Anything you can remember would be of help."  
  
Kaplan folded her hands in her lap and frowned. "It was a long time ago," she began. "We went through them because everything in New York was so backed up; we would have had to wait at least another year for a placement. The Interstate Compact approved the adoption, and the agency seemed very professional. We didn't know about the problems they were having at the time, of course."  
  
The file was sitting open in front of Prentiss on the table and she skimmed the printout of the article on top. "The kickback scandal?"  
  
"That's right," Kaplan nodded. "About a year after we took Billy home, there was an investigation and the whole agency was shut down. Improper and incomplete documentation, bribes to judges, potentially forged relinquishment documents... We had to submit a statement and provide copies of all of Billy's paperwork, naturally, but everything was in order. We were lucky."  
  
Hotch flipped a page. Prentiss held her breath. It was one thing to know what had to be done and another to be there for it. In so many ways this was so much easier than other notifications could ever be. Everyone was still alive, for one thing. But that moment, that hush that settled just before they tore someone’s world apart; that was a scar more permanent.

Hotch turned the folder and pushed it gently towards Dr. Kaplan. A photograph was clipped to the paper on top, and for a second Dr. Kaplan’s eyes flared with recognition, a look which quickly shifted into confusion. A young man with dark brown hair and elegant features stared up at them defiantly, both alike and so utterly different from his brother. "Were you aware that Billy has a twin?"

It was like watching the woman take a blow to the gut, the way she seemed to stop breathing for a moment. Kaplan stared, first at Hotch and then down at the file folder between them, eyes wide and almost panic-stricken. She didn’t need to say a word. She hadn’t known.

One second ticked by, then two, Kaplan’s mouth working with no sound coming out. She moved, breaking the spell of the moment, and reached out to pull the photograph closer.  Her hand came up to push strands of dark hair back behind her ear as she bent over the photograph, studying it, memorizing each line and shadow.

“He looks very much like Billy, doesn’t he? But this boy’s eyes are blue; Billy’s are brown. They can’t be twins,” she replied with something like satisfaction, pushing the folder back with her fingertips.

“It’s rare, but there are cases where even identical twins have different hair and eye colours,” Emily answered, trying to inject a measure of calm into her voice. It was so natural to resist the truth, to grasp at any straw, but it was so important that she believe them now.

“And even with the similarities, they could easily be fraternal. We’ve seen the records, Dr. Kaplan. Your son and Thomas Shepherd-“ Emily nodded at the folder between them, “are twins. Thomas was adopted a few weeks before Billy, by a family in New Jersey.” She slipped the second sheet out from under the photograph, handed her the documentation that Garcia had unsealed. “His house was the first one attacked.”

Kaplan’s head jerked up and her eyes went wide. “Is he-“

Hotch shook his head. “No. He and his parents survived. But the Shepherds – and the agency employees who have been killed – they were targeted for a reason. And once we know what that reason is, we can get in front of the UnSub and stop him before he can kill again.”

Emily passed her a notepad. "We're going to need you to write down anything and everything you can remember about the Creche. Who you dealt with, how they seemed to you, even incidental conversations. Anything you can remember about the victims, especially."  
  
Kaplan nodded and took the pad. Emily could almost see the shield of professional detachment sliding down around her as she did so, a defense mechanism long honed by practice. "I have our records from all of that at home, and I'll have my husband fax them to me. We didn't deal with Mr. Cheung at all; that was all through our lawyer. Our original caseworker passed away about five years ago. Breast cancer. It's why the names didn't connect for me, originally." She was apologizing, regret hanging heavy behind her words.  
  
"There's no way anyone could have made those connections, especially not in time to save the Westons," Hotch cut right to the heart of the matter and Dr. Kaplan deflated, then squared her shoulders and nodded firmly.  
  
"I'll pull together everything I can."

They stood and she headed for the door, then paused, one hand on the back of an empty chair. “Is there any chance we could meet him? And his parents, of course.” There was no need at all to ask whom she meant.  
  
Hotch nodded, his expression carefully schooled to suggest nothing. "We have agents meeting with the Shepherds to discuss the attack on their home. When this is all over and things have settled down-“ he paused, a pause that had to be deliberate, to allow Dr. Kaplan to fill in the blanks to her own preference.

“Yes, of course,” she nodded slowly, her eyes drifting back to the photograph again.

“Considering the circumstances, Doctor Kaplan, we’re arranging for a police guard for your home tonight."

“I suppose that’s necessary,” Kaplan replied, “but I can’t say that I’m fond of the idea of being under house arrest.”

“This isn’t house arrest. Until we understand how this UnSub is choosing his targets, anyone who had formal contact with the Creche in those key years has to be considered a potential victim. This is for your protection, Doctor.”

“Like I said,” she replied, her smile thin. “I understand that it’s necessary, but I don’t have to like it. And now- Now I have to figure out how I’m going to explain all of this to my son.”

**4 pm Friday, Springfield, New Jersey:**

Happy families are all alike, that was how the quote went, but unhappy ones were each miserable in their own ways. Or something like that.

That was a bit of a stretch, Rossi decided, sitting in a hideously uncomfortable paisley armchair in the temporary apartment currently rented by Mary Shepherd. The living room was sparse, had the look of something pre-furnished, a place of refuge for her after the fire and the beginning of what Garcia’s research had suggested was shaping into a bitter divorce.

There were scattered mementos and photographs placed on the shelves, an attempt to make the place feel like home, but none of the pictures included Thomas.

Frank was also present for the interview, parked in the matching chair and glowering at the pair of FBI agents as though everything was either directly or indirectly their fault. His meaty hands, knuckles scarred (whether from his assembly line work or bar fights, Rossi wasn't quite ready to decide), were resting on the arms of the chair, his fingers drumming.  
  
Mary Shepherd, tall and slim with dark brown hair, perched on the very edge of the couch beside JJ, her hands trembling and fluttering around her face as she spoke. The delicate wounded-bird motions spoke to an instinctive part of his brain that wanted to protect. It was silly to look for signs of her son in her face, on the base level, but something about the guarded look in her eyes reminded him of the photograph.  
  
"He always was trouble, even when he was a baby; he'd just cry and cry and nothing could soothe him. They all said it was colic and he'd grow out of it, you know, but it takes its toll, a baby crying and not being able to soothe him. And he's always had trouble at school. We had him tested for dyslexia, you know, but he can read just fine."  
  
"There's nothing wrong with that boy except sheer stubbornness," Frank spoke over her, and she ducked her head reflexively.    
  
"Mrs. Shepherd?" JJ prompted kindly, and the older woman revived under the attention. JJ was good at that, at smoothing ruffled feathers. Note to self; work with her on interrogations more often.  
 _  
_ "Well, then we saw a new doctor, and she said he had ADHD," Mary ticked the diagnosis off on her fingers, "and then I did some reading? Because that didn’t seem to fit, and the medications didn’t seem to be helping, and _I_ thought maybe he also had ODD, and possibly RAD, on account of being adopted and all."

“You’re not a doctor, Mary,” Frank cut in. “All that alphabet garbage is just new ways of saying ‘pay us thousands of dollars to say we have no _goddamned_ idea.’” His eyes flickered to JJ and he looked a little bit abashed. “Sorry for the language.”

“There's nothing linking Reactive Attachment Disorder to healthy adopted infants with no history of abuse," Rossi said. "ADHD, RAD, Oppositional Defiance Disorder - that's a lot of labels for one kid to carry around."

“And there were always a drugs, new regimens; we even had him enrolled in some clinical trials, Doctor Milton signed us up for them. New therapies that were supposed to help...” she trailed off, wringing her hands. “But nothing ever did,” she finished quietly. “He’s just always been so _angry_.”

Frank rose from his chair, paced around behind it, leaned his hands on the back, a shield between himself and the other three in the room. His shoulders slumped a little and he fought to bring them back to straight, and when he looked closer Rossi could see the tired lines around his eyes, the bags beneath them that Frank’s initial bluster had been an effort to conceal.

“In my day, we just called 'em as we saw 'em - bad seeds. His mother was out of her mind,” Frank clasped and unclasped his hands. “He's been nothing but trouble since the day we got him, and –“ his shoulders did slump, then, in something like defeat. “And while I know what the police said, Agent Rossi, I don't believe for an instant that he had nothing to do with that fire. When there's trouble around here, you can bet your ass that Tommy is right in the middle of it. He’s got no respect for anyone, or anything."  
 __  
JJ leaned forward to look around Mary Shepherd’s shoulder, and Rossi watched Shepherd while she carried on the line of questioning. "The night of the fire, Mr. Shepherd; do you remember anything unusual?"  
  
“Other than my house burning down, you mean?” Shepherd caught himself, gave his head a tight shake and took a breath.  Rossi leaned forward, hands clasped and hanging below his knees, to listen to the answer.

“No. I heard noises,” Frank began, holding JJ’s gaze, his shoulders and jaw set and determined. “Went downstairs to check it out. The place had been trashed, cabinets turned out, I figured Tommy had been looking for something. Maybe to pawn; or smoke, I have no idea. But it was one hell of a mess.”

“Did you smell anything unusual, or hear anything out of the ordinary?” Rossi pushed.

“No, nothing,” Frank replied. “Look, we’ve already been over all this, with the police, with the insurance company, with the arson investigators. There was no-one else there, I couldn’t get the light to turn on in the kitchen. I went back to the living room, and it was empty, with crap thrown everywhere. And then everything was on fire. I yelled for Mary, and we ran out of the house.”

“You yelled for Mary-“ Rossi cocked his head. He couldn’t be saying what his omission was suggesting, but then – they’d seen enough real depravity that casual indifference shouldn’t have been so alarming. “Not Tommy?”

“Tommy was sleeping in the treehouse,” Mary supplied hastily, glancing at her husband – at her soon-to-be-former-husband – before she spoke. “He does that sometimes. When he doesn’t feel like sleeping in the house. I saw him go out there after dinner.”

“So he was out of the house the whole evening?” Rossi asked, just to be sure. “It was the middle of winter; that’s a cold night to spend outdoors.” There was a tell, a flash of anger between Frank and Mary, and Frank looked away first.

“The whole evening,” Mary nodded. “He has a sleeping bag up there, took his school bag to do his homework,”

“So he said,” Frank’s mouth screwed up in a frown of distaste.

“To do his homework, Frank,” Mary shot back, one sign of defiance that flared and then died again, her hands back to fluttering. “And then we went to bed, and when we woke up there was banging downstairs, and then everything was filled with smoke. Tommy was out of the tree house when we got outside, and we waited for the fire department.”

“And,” Frank added, “the police.”

“How did he seem, when you found him?” Rossi asked.

Mary pinched her lips together and there, there was the sign of doubt that he’d been waiting for, the thing that had made her stand by Frank at first and not her only child. “Quiet,” she supplied softly. “Flat. Not angry anymore.”

 

**4:00 pm, Friday, The Beacon School, New York:**

The school was mostly deserted by the time Teddy left the locker room, hair still wet from his post-practice shower. The rest of the basketball team was still back there, making crude jokes and shit-talking about the game, but he had places he’d rather be. Billy wasn’t at his locker, though, or waiting for him by the front door. Teddy pulled his phone out of his pocket, just in case, but there were no texts, or missed calls. Which meant one last place to check.

“Hey, you,” Teddy dangled his upper body over the railing on the front stairs of the school, flashing a grin at the dark head below. Billy’s eyes were wide when he looked up from his math book, back against the wall in the sheltered recess.

He was standing and brushing off his jeans by the time Teddy made it down the stairs and around the side. Teddy waited until Billy had stuffed his book back in his messenger bag before taking advantage of the semi-private hiding place to drag Billy in for a kiss. Billy’s lips were warm, and his hand came up to grab at Teddy’s shirt and hold him in place for a minute longer. “Everything alright?” Teddy asked, once they’d broken apart. He scanned Billy’s face, but there were no new bruises, and he didn’t flinch away.

“I’m fine,” Billy started walking toward the sidewalk. “Kessler was lurking, and I didn’t feel like playing ‘dodge the goon’ while I waited.”

It was Billy’s matter-of-fact acceptance of things that made Teddy angrier than the existence of the bully in the first place, and he felt his jaw clench at the idea of Billy running scared from _anyone._ Especially a butthead like Kessler. “I keep telling you, come hang with us in the gym during practice. No-one cares if you sit in the bleachers, and he wouldn’t dare pull anything with Mr. Trevor right there.”

Billy shrugged, and tucked his hands into his pockets. “I get more homework done when I’m not being distracted by sweaty guys in gym shorts,” he joked, laughing when Teddy grimaced. “I don’t need you to protect me, Ted,” he continued after a minute, getting serious again. “I can handle Kessler.”

Teddy raised a hand, then dropped it again. “We’re partners, Billy,” he said, bumping Billy’s shoulder with his own. “We look out for each other. It’s part of the deal.”  

Billy smiled at that, looking up and then away. “Yeah, I know.” That hung in the air for a second before he changed the subject back. “Anyway, it’s only a couple of months before he graduates and is out of here for good.”

“Assuming he graduates. I’m amazed that moron can even read.” Teddy’s tone was as light as he could make it, but he couldn’t entirely ignore the anger underneath. But then they were off and running with the jokes, and Billy was smiling and acting like nothing was wrong, and it was easier to let it all go. At least for now.

\--

Eli was already at the door when they arrived at the diner, and Teddy waved to flag him down. Eli waited for the pair of them to catch up, his hand half-lifted in greeting. “No Jonas?” Teddy called out as he and Billy got close enough, and Eli shook his head.

“He should be here,” Eli shrugged and pushed the door open, his massive backpack shifting on his shoulder. The guy seemed to carry half his locker in there, but the weight of it never seemed to bother him. “He said he’d grab a table.”

Jonas was in a booth, not a table, but at least it was one big enough for the four of them this time. His head was down, his brown buzz-cut all that was really visible as they approached. He missed their approach entirely, typing furiously on the laptop on the table in front of him. He was caught off guard when Eli grabbed the earpiece of his headphones and pulled it away from his head. “Hi!” he yelped, coloured a little, then shuffled over to give Eli room to slide in beside.

There was general confusion and scuffling and backpacks piling up in the corner of the booth, and by the time the dust settled and food had been ordered, Billy and Teddy were half-sprawled across one side of the booth and Eli was trying to read the screen over Jonas’ shoulder. “Is that Cassie again? Isn’t she coming today?”

“She’s grounded.” Jonas pushed his headphones down so they sat at the back of his neck, and clicked his speakers off. The tinny beat died away. “Not from the computer; from me.” He looked woebegone. “Her stepdad thinks I’m a bad influence.”

And that wasn’t actually as funny as it first seemed on the surface, Teddy decided. Jonas came across as all geek – like, winning-robot-wars and able to recite Pi to the 200th digit kind of geek. But he had one hell of a protective streak, and Teddy could half-imagine him mouthing off to Officer Burdick at exactly the wrong moment.

Billy just laughed. “You? What trouble are you going to get her into? The incredible dangers of Katamari Damacy marathons?”

“Dunno,” Teddy grinned. “Katamari can get pretty intense.”

Billy snickered, and Eli sat back in the booth again, shaking his head.

“I don’t know. It just sucks,” Jonas complained. “Oh, Eli? If Mr. Burdick ever asks? You’ve been helping Cassie with her math homework on AIM.”

“I’ve been what? I don’t even have an AIM account.”

“That’s not what he thinks.”

“Aw, come on!” Eli let his head fall back against the cushions of the booth and groaned. “The last thing I need is a cop with an attitude problem thinking that I’m hitting on _Cass_.”

“It’s not like that! Anyway, Cassie deletes all the chatlogs so it’s not like he’ll know-“

The bickering was as comforting as it was familiar, and Teddy felt his muscles unknot, Billy’s shoulder warm where his arm was draped across it. The weekend stretched out ahead of him, warm and fresh and inviting. The game against Central was tomorrow evening, and if he finished his history paper at Billy’s place tonight, then they’d have all afternoon to hang out-

Billy’s phone rang, a shrill warning siren that he’d assigned for his parents when he’d been mad at them months ago. “You still haven’t changed that?” Teddy laughed, as the noise brought him out of his daydream. Eli and Jonas were still bickering, but lowered their voices to give Billy a chance to talk.

“Hey dad. Yeah. At Woolster’s – yeah. Study group with the guys.”

It was only sort of a lie; they usually did eventually get around to complaining about projects and test prep classes and PSAT scores. But most of the time it was just fries and comic books and movies they hadn’t seen, or had seen, or swore they would never see and ended up watching anyway, and it was one of the best parts of Teddy’s week.

“Teddy, Eli and Jonas, yeah.” Billy replied. Teddy picked up the paper wrapper from his straw and dragged the corner across Billy’s ear. Billy swatted at him and pretended to glare.

“Sure – what does she want?” Billy reached across the table and stole the pen that Eli had been tapping on the table, pulled Teddy’s napkin out from under his elbow to start taking notes. “Okay. Tuna sandwich, side of coleslaw, bottled water. Got it. Yeah.” He hung up and tucked his phone back in his pocket with a sigh, and started digging through their stuff.

Teddy arched an eyebrow, and refused to move out of Billy’s way. “Takeout run?” It was unusual enough to be worth asking; Billy’s dad was usually huge on the whole home-cooked meal thing.

“Mom’s working late; that big FBI case, dad asked me to bring her dinner.” Billy jammed a handful of his fries into his mouth and fought to get his wallet out of his pocket.  “They got here today,” he explained to Eli and – well, just to Eli, since Jonas was head-down and typing away again, oblivious. “Looking for some guy who’s been setting fires.”

Eli leaned forward on his elbows, attentive. “Someone’s been setting fires? Do they have any leads?”

Jonas stopped typing and blinked up at them. “Five deliberately set house fires in the past month, at least eleven confirmed deaths – police thought it was kids, but now they suspect a serial killer.” So maybe he had been paying attention. Teddy’s surprise must have shown on his face, and Eli’s definitely did, because Jonas gave them a scathing look. “Don’t you guys pay attention to the news?”

“How do you get ‘serial killer’ from ‘FBI’?” Eli sat back, his eyes narrowing with the question.

“The people they called in,” Jonas said, his hands moving as he explained. “It’s a group of specialists; behavioural analysts. They only get invited in when the police think they’ve got a real psycho on their hands.”

“Oh yeah; like Doctor Loomis from Hallowe’en?” Teddy raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, but with guns.”

“Loomis gets a gun early on,” Billy pointed out, crawling over Teddy to get out of the booth. Teddy put up his legs and made himself a roadblock, and got an elbow in the sternum for his trouble.

“Your mom’s a cop, Billy; does she carry a gun?” Jonas asked, still poking at his keyboard.

“My mom’s not a cop. She just analyses people for the cops. And she doesn’t _need_ a gun. She’d just talk to a bad guy until he gave in to the overwhelming urge to throw himself into traffic.” Billy said, his voice muffled by the hoodie he was pulling back on over his t-shirt.

Teddy stared, mesmerized, at the strip of skin bared when Billy’s shirt rode up. “Want me to walk over with you? I need to get home soon anyway.”

 “Aww; young love,” Eli snickered. “When’s the wedding?”

 “Sure, that’d be great,” Billy replied to Teddy first, and slung the strap of his bag over his shoulder. “Don’t be jealous, Eli, just because I’ve got game and you don’t,” he jibed, rubbing his knuckles over Eli’s shaved head, jumping back before Eli could swat him away.

“Hardly. No offense, Teddy, but you’re _really_ not my type.”

Teddy flexed his muscles as Jonas laughed, then cocked his head. “You still haven’t called Kate?” Teddy hazarded a guess.

“I’m not calling her. If she wants to talk to me, she can call _me_.”

“Oh brother,” Billy rolled his eyes.

Teddy laced his fingers through Billy’s as they walked away from the table. Eli and Jonas’ voices rose and fell behind them in the familiar tones of another argument, until the bustle and noise of the diner drowned them out completely.

 

**5:00 pm, Friday, 19 th Precinct:**

Hotch set his laptop on the table so the screen was visible to everyone, Garcia’s office with its dozen computer monitors on display. Morgan watched as her fingers flew across the keyboard that was just out of view below the screen. She shook her head; that was never a good sign. If Garcia couldn’t find a thing, generally, that meant it wasn’t there to be found.

“Even widening it out got me nothing,” she reported, the pink fuzzy ball on the end of the pen tucked behind her ear bouncing in time with her movements. “There are thousands of general contractors in New York City alone-“

“Twenty-two thousand, seven hundred and forty-one,” Reid supplied from his seat, not looking up from the map spread out on the table in front of him. Morgan snorted, earning him a confused blink from Reid in return.

Garcia took it all in stride. “Yes, thank you darling. I have also checked electricians, home inspectors, home security companies and – on a whim and a prayer – plumbers. But despite those vast quantities of men and women willing and able, there are none who have any connection to the Creche agency during your three-year window, and none of the victims had any renovations done in the past ten years. At least none that they hired licensed contractors for.”

“Did we just go back to square one?” Morgan groaned, running the next set of options through in his mind. If not contractors with access, where did that leave them? “What about contractors based out of New Jersey?”

“That search is currently running, oh best beloved,” Garcia nodded off-screen, at a monitor that Morgan couldn’t see. “I’ll let you know haste-post-haste. So far, I have to say, it’s not looking good.”

Rossi dropped his coat on the back of a chair, JJ coming in the door behind him. “That would be a ‘no’ on the handymen, I take it?” he asked, eyebrow up. “We need to bring in Thomas Shepherd,” he switched subjects without preamble.

“Do we like him for this?” Morgan asked, reaching for the notepad sitting at his elbow. The teen still didn’t fit the profile, but any lead was better than nothing. 

Hotch replied before Rossi could. “New Jersey PD cleared him,” he shook his head. “No traces of accelerant on his hands or clothes, no tools in his belongings that could have been used to strip the fixture, no evidence that he’d ever purchased methanol, and he was in custody on the dates of the fires at the Loyola and Dwyer homes.”

“The physical evidence matches his mother’s story, that he was up in the tree house before the fire. He may be our only actual witness.” JJ took her seat, reaching for a bottle of water from the side table.

“Where is Thomas now?” Hotch asked, his eyes flickering to the laptop screen.

“He was at the Essex County Juvenile Detention Center for two months after the whole ‘house set on fire’ incident,” Garcia said. “After he was cleared, he was released to a group home in Union County. Sending you the relevant deets as we speak. Anything else, my dear ones?”

“That’s all for now, Garcia.” Hotch nodded. “Let us know the moment you have more.”

“As though upon the wings of an eagle,” Garcia agreed – at least, Morgan assumed that meant she agreed – and signed off with a flourish and a blown kiss.

Hotch sent a file to the printer and straightened again. “JJ, call the group home and arrange for us to sit down with Thomas. We need to know what he saw that night. Morgan, Prentiss, back to the files on the Creche; see if you can find what we’ve missed. Whatever is going on here, this isn’t necessarily about the specific victims, which means his next hit is going to be all but impossible to predict.”

“Is it possible that it’s something related to the twins specifically?” Prentiss asked, rocking back in her chair and flipping her pen over in her fingers. “The Shepherds were the first ones targeted, and the subsequent fires have all been in New York, closer to the Kaplans.”

“But it’s not a direct line,” Reid objected. “And half of the victims were upstate, with no connection at all other than association with the agency. If the UnSub had access to records that gave him Thomas Shepherd, he would have found the Kaplans long before now. Not to mention he didn’t follow up with Thomas when he had the opportunity. He let him walk away.”

Rossi tilted his head. “Then Thomas doesn’t have whatever it is he’s looking for. Maybe it’s something to do with the mother?” Reid looked at him sharply. “Just putting that out there.”

“Wanda Lehnsherr is still hospitalized,” Morgan reminded him. “Garcia checked with the Carrier Clinic and they’ve had no reports of any breaches of security, either in or out.”

“Any visitors?”

Morgan shook his head. “The only visitor she gets is a brother, Pietro, and he’s been in Poland on business for the past month. They don’t expect to see him again for another six weeks, at best.”

“We still need to talk to her,” Hotch nodded at Rossi in thanks. “But I don’t want us getting too focused. We still need to deliver a profile, and right now all we have is speculation.”

The notes on the pad in front of Morgan blurred into each other as he sifted through the events of the day. He jotted down a handful of things – _Adult. Methyl alcohol, Creche.  Electrical/home repair knowledge. Hunting._

He underlined that last a couple of times, then glanced up to find Hotch watching him. “This guy, Hotch,” Morgan began to try to put into words the thoughts he’d been chasing all day.

“He’s not killing because he has to; it’s not what drives him. It’s an afterthought; a way to clean up after himself. He’s practically tearing these houses apart searching for something, in a short span of time and while the residents are _home_. That suggests that he knows exactly what he’s looking for, and doesn’t care how he has to go about getting it. He’s organized enough to bring his own accelerant, but disorganized enough to go in when he’s most likely to get himself caught. This guy has a serious vendetta, and he’s not going to stop until he’s accomplished his goal.”

“Then we need to find out what that goal is,” Hotch replied seriously, as though it would simply be that easy. High hopes, man. “And get to it before he does.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein discoveries are made.

  **Chapter 3:**

**5:30 pm, Friday, 19 th Precinct:**

The precinct was in a lull when Billy and Teddy arrived, the day shift’s activity mostly over and the hour too early for the night shift’s parade of crazies. Billy balanced the take-out box under his arm as he pushed the door open onto the familiar lobby, Teddy following close behind as they made their way up to the front desk.

Gibson was on duty, which was cool. She was always friendly, unlike some of the others who had no time for him. His mom was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn’t unusual; the case that was keeping her late probably had her tied up in interviews as well.

“Hey, Sergeant Gibson,” Billy nodded to the desk sergeant, setting the bagged-up box on the counter. “Dinner run for my mom. Can you let her know I dropped it off, when she gets out of whatever?”

“Billy!” Gibson put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone she’d been speaking into and waved him down. “Your mom wants you to wait. She should be finished in a few minutes.”

“I swear, my homework’s mostly done,” he said with a grin, but Gibson didn’t smile back. That was a bit weird, as was the way she kept looking at him sideways, like she was trying not to stare.

She gestured to the handful of chairs along the wall on the reception area. “Grab a seat; I’m sure she’ll be out in a minute or two. Your dad knows where you are?”

“Yeah,” Billy nodded and wandered down a little past the desk, craning his neck to see into the room beyond. That was a meeting room, but right now it was all set up like a freaking command center, with computers and display boards and pictures of burned-out houses- and him.

A mug shot of him.

“When did you get arrested?” Teddy’s voice right behind his ear made Billy jump. He turned and shook his head, and then Gibson was half-rising out of her chair.

“Boys.” Her voice was firm and brooked no argument, even if Billy had been inclined to argue with someone wearing a gun.

They headed back to the row of chairs, Billy’s feet dragging. He shouldn’t look back, shouldn’t betray the new knowledge that he had of things he definitely wasn’t supposed to have seen. “I’ve never been arrested,” he murmured to Teddy. Teddy’s brow creased when he frowned, and Billy ached to reach out with his thumb to rub the fold away. “I’ve got to get a better look.”

Teddy glanced up at Gibson, then nodded. “On it.” He dropped his bag on an empty chair, but headed over to the desk instead of sitting down, while Billy folded himself into a seat and fussed with his phone. “Hey, Sergeant Gibson,” he heard Teddy start, that easy charm just flowing off of him in that way that always made adults relax. “I was wondering – is Jamal going to be playing tomorrow? He was awesome last time we went up against Central, and I heard he was moving up from being an alternate-“

Billy counted down from fifty, waited until Gibson had engaged in the conversation. “I’ve got to hit the bathroom,” he announced. “It’s ok – I know where it is from here,” he waved off Gibson’s attention and she turned back to the conversation without paying him much mind. Awesome. Three minutes, that’s all he needed.

The room was empty when he pushed the door open with just a touch. The board he’d glimpsed through the window – that was what he was after, and Billy moved closer, grabbing his phone and flicking to the camera.

It was his face staring back at him, but it wasn’t.

The shape was the same, the floppy dark hair, the too-narrow chin, but his eyes were different.

Billy raised his phone, and took a picture.

Sprawling handwriting on the label read ‘Thomas Shepherd.’ Billy’s birthdate. More notes beside that read ‘twins,’ underlined twice. ‘Wanda Lehnsherr.’ ‘Creche – UnSub adopted/foster?’

He took another picture.

The rest of the board was all about the fires, just like Jonas had described – and Jesus _fucking_ Christ, were those charred bodies?

Voices were echoing in the hallway now and Billy hurtled out of the room before they could catch him. He wasn’t going to be fast enough. Two of the FBI – had to be – saw him, the big black guy calling his name as Billy ran. He heard footsteps behind him but he knew this building a lot better than they did, a lot better than most, and he spun on his heel down one hallway, two lefts, then out the back door to where some of the officers liked to sit and smoke.

The air was crisp and clean, the wind brisk, and for the moment, he was alone in the alley behind the loading bay.

Billy breathed in. _Thomas Shepherd._ Holy fuck. He breathed out.

Teddy. Billy’s phone was still in his hand and he thumbed a quick text.

_Out back. Fuckery abounds._

And then he had to stop and think and try and wrap his head around it all.

 Twin. The agency that had handled his adoption. _Twin._ It echoed in his head as though he’d said it aloud, and the sound choked in his throat when he tried. He didn’t have much time; they’d find him any second now. _Think it through, Kaplan. Be logical._ His birthday,his birth mother’s name, the photograph that he had never posed for. Blue eyes instead of brown, but did that mean anything?

 _Holy shit_. _I have a twin brother, and the FBI is looking for him._

 _Holy_ shit _, I just ran away from the FBI._

His phone was still in his hand. He dialled a number. Jonas answered on the fourth ring, the sound of typing in the background.

“Jonas? It’s Billy. Stop for a second and listen to me. I need your help.” He was having a hard time catching his breath, his voice sounding wrung-out even to his own ears.

The ticka-ticka stopped. “Billy? What’s-“

“Shut up and listen for a minute. I need you to find someone for me. His name is Thomas Shepherd. I think he’s in New York, or maybe New Jersey.”

“Shepherd? But-“

“I’m at the police station. The FBI have my picture up, Jonas, and not just mine. They think this Thomas guy is my biological brother. My _twin_. And from the pictures, I think they’re right.” The words tumbled out in a flood, a torrent of stumbling sentences that he couldn’t stop to reword without having to think about what he was saying.

 _Why didn’t they_ tell _me?_

There was an expulsion of air from Jonas’ end of the line that was somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. “Holy shit, Bill-“

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I took pictures of their board – I’ll send them to you. I’ve got to know-”

“I’m on it.” Jonas’ voice was calm, collected, reassuring, and it was easy to be lulled by that, to take a second to breathe, to trust that Jonas would come through.

Plans; he had to have a plan. “Don’t call back, alright? I’ve got to go back in; I left Teddy in there. I’ll see you online tonight.”

He hung up, sent the pictures, sagged back against the wall.

His phone buzzed in his hand.

**B? U ok? U coming back in, or m I coming out?**

_Coming back. Just need a min._

**k. Ur moms here, w MIB.  wht happend?**

_Not me in pics – twin? M and d never said anything_

There was a long pause, then:

**im here. come back in whn ur ready. Ill stall.**

\--

“Doctor Kaplan?” Hotch turned as an officer approached them in the hallway, Rebecca stopping mid-sentence to allow the uniformed man to continue “Your son’s here. He’s waiting at the desk.”

She nodded her thanks and gestured for Hotch to accompany her as she turned down a different hallway, this one leading to the front of the building. “Please let me do the talking at first.” She had drawn her professional shell around herself again, looking ahead. “It will be better coming from me. He’s going to be unhappy about it either way.”

Hotch nodded. “There’s no point in burdening him with the entire case history, just the understanding that-“

Rebecca had stopped as they drew near to the reception desk, and Hotch followed her gaze. There was only one teenager waiting in the chairs on the other side, a tall, broad-shouldered blond boy in a letter jacket, texting furiously on the cell phone in his hands. He looked nothing at all like the photographs of William or Thomas. “Do you know him?”

Rebecca laughed, just once, and softly. “You could say that. Theodore Altman. He’s Billy’s-“ she hesitated for only a second, a pause short enough to be almost unremarkable. “-best friend.” And the expression that softened her face, just for a moment, was a little bit wistful and a little bit fond.

More voices behind them, then, these ones familiar. Hotch turned as Morgan and Prentiss approached, Morgan breathing slightly more heavily than usual. Prentiss looked around and behind them first, searching for someone or something else, before turning her attention to Hotch. “Is he here?”

That was not good. Hotch caught her gaze, held it. “Is who here?”

“Billy Kaplan,” Morgan answered, running his hand back over his head. “He was here – he was looking at the board, Hotch. We came back in just as he was leaving.” The look he gave Dr. Kaplan was apologetic. “I have no idea how he got back there, but-“

Dr. Kaplan closed her eyes, took a deep breath and centered herself. “He’s resourceful,” she replied after a second. “Where did he go?”

Prentiss shook her head. “He ran off when we came in; he seemed extremely upset. Where would he be likely to go?”

There was a soft scuff from behind them, and Hotch turned. Altman was standing by the counter, apology and concern writ large on his face. “If you’re talking about Billy,” he said a little hesitantly, his phone still in his hand. The look he turned on Dr. Kaplan was apologetic and uncertain. “He’s coming back in. It’ll just be a minute.”

 

**6:00 pm, Friday, 19 th Precinct:**

It was the raised voices that caught JJ’s attention as she came out of the meeting with Captain Oliver. The door to one of the interview rooms was standing only slightly ajar, just enough to allow the passage of sound.

She could see the source of it through the window – Rebecca Kaplan and a young man who had to be her son, the pair of them talking over and around each other, hands moving in the space between them as words tumbled out. “Why didn’t you _tell_ me” was interrupted by “we didn’t _know_ , Billy; they never a word-” When she looked back, Kaplan was reaching out to draw her son into an embrace.

Another young man was sitting in the hallway, his eyes dark with concern and a cell phone to his ear. JJ gave him a reassuring smile. He smiled back, just for a moment, then returned his attention to his phone call. “I’m staying at Billy’s tonight. There’s a lot going on. Yeah,” he was saying as she walked past. “Family stuff, and he needs... he needs a friend. I’ll explain later. Thanks, Mom.”

JJ turned into the meeting room and paused in the doorway. She launched into her update before Hotch and Rossi had a chance to ask. “I spoke with Captain Oliver, and he’s got officers in the process of contacting all the families who adopted from the Creche during that time span, as well as all the birth parents. It was a small agency, thankfully, so there’s only a few dozen left to track down.”

“This is going to create a panic,” Prentiss said, leaning back in her chair and fiddling with the pen in her hands.

“But if it helps reduce his easy victim pool, it’s worth it.” JJ couldn’t help the little burst of hope, as futile as it sometimes seemed. They did the work, they caught the bad guys. That was supposed to be the deal.

Voices echoed in the hallway as the Kaplans strode past, the blond boy from the hallway trailing in their wake.

“William Kaplan, you will do nothing of the sort. The only thing you need to do is go home and get your homework done, and leave this to the professionals. I don’t want you anywhere near this investigation.”

“Mom, just listen-“

JJ pulled her attention back as Hotch started to speak. “We’re ready to deliver the profile.” He’d seen her distraction, gave her a curious look, but didn’t pursue it.

That little surge of hope became a larger one, and she refocused. _Call the precinct together, need to use the bullpen for the space, it would be better to wait twenty minutes for the shift change to finish._ “I’ll let the captain know.”

\--

Hotch didn’t need notes for this. JJ watched from the back of the room as he led the briefing with that carefully controlled expression that could be read as indifference, when it really went so much deeper than that.

“Our suspect will be a white male. While normally arsonists are young, our UnSub is likely between the ages of thirty and fifty. He’ll be socially awkward, and won’t make eye contact easily. He’s someone on the fringes.”

“We know he has a vehicle,” Reid continued, “likely an older station wagon, or a van. He needs space to carry his gear with him. He may work or have worked as a general contractor or electrician in the past, and is currently either unemployed or self-employed. The chase itself is consuming him. He doesn’t have the focus to hold down an office job.”

Prentiss took over without needing to wait for a signal. “There was some kind of trigger four months ago; a death, or a loss, that’s pushed him over the edge. Setting fires is often a substitute for sexual release, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with this man. He’s hunting for a specific target, and whatever it is that he wants, it’s connected to the investigations and the shutdown involving the Creche in the early 1990s. He could be an adoptive parent, a birth parent, or someone else whose life was negatively impacted by the investigations.”

Morgan picked it up from her when she paused and nodded. “When cornered, if he feels that his mission is in jeopardy, he will likely lash out. We have to anticipate that once we find him, he’ll fight back rather than surrender.”

“Any questions?” Oliver asked, then waited a beat. There was no response. “You’re dismissed. Let’s catch this guy.”

**10:00 pm, NYC:**

  
**10:03 pm Hulkling has entered the chat**

**10:04 pm Stature ::** teddy! Are you over at billy’s?

 **10:05 pm Patriot ::** Is he ok? Jonas filled us in.

 **10:05 pm Hulkling ::** Hey Cassie – yeah. He’s scrounging up snacks /waves at Eli  
  
 **10:06 pm Hulkling ::** @Eli I think so? Maybe. It's been a weird day. Weirder than normal, I mean. Dinner was awkward

 **10:12 pm Wiccan17 has entered the chat**  
  
 **10:14 pm Wiccan17 ::** hey guys  
  
 **10:14 pm Stature ::** billy! {{{hugs}}}  
  
 **10:14 pm Wiccan17 ::** thanks  
 ****  
10:16 pm Wiccan17 :: any news on Thomas?  
 ****  
10:16 pm Vision (sees all, knows all) :: Working on it. I can track him up to about two weeks ago, then he goes off the radar.  
 ****  
10:16 pm Stature :: what does that mean?  
  
 **10:17 pm Vision (sees all, knows all) ::** It means no trail, not stuff I can see. He was in juvie, then some halfway house thing  
  
 **10:17 pm Patriot ::** JUVIE? Is he some kind of criminal?  
  
 **10:18 pm Wiccan17 ::** they thought he set his house on fire; that much I know  
  
 **10:18 pm Patriot ::** Did he?  
  
 **10:19 pm Vision (sees all, knows all) ::** No. It was this other guy they're looking for now.  
  
 **10:20 pm Stature ::** billy's got an evil twin!  
  
 **10:20 pm Hulkling ::** How do you know Bill's not the evil twin?  
  
 **10:20 pm Wiccan17 ::** not evil? also, no goatee.  
 ****  
10:21 pm Hulkling :: You could grow one. That might look good  
 ****  
10:21 pm Wiccan17 :: you think?  
 ****  
10:22 pm Patriot :: You guys are sitting in the same room, can you flirt offline? Pls?  
  
 **10:22 pm Stature ::** someone's bitter  
  
 **10:23 pm Patriot ::** Can we stay focused?  
 ****  
10:24 pm Vision (sees all, knows all) :: Right. So Thomas had been checking in at these group meetings ( <3 electronic timetabling), but stopped 2 weeks ago.  
  
 **10:24 pm Stature ::** maybe he went home?  
  
 **10:25 pm Vision (sees all, knows all) ::** There should be paperwork filed somewhere if he did - can't find any. Cass, did your stepdad say anything?  
  
 **10:27 pm Stature ::** not to me, obvs. but if they knew where he was, and he was in trouble? they'd totally be taking him into protective custody right now.  
  
 **10:27 pm Wiccan17 ::** yeah; there are cops outside my house now. “Protection detail.”  
  
 **10:29 pm Stature ::** so they probably don't know where thomas is either  
  
 **10:29 pm Patriot ::** Or they're just careful enough not to put that kind of information where it can get hacked into by teenagers.  
  
 **10:29 pm Hulkling ::** Point.  
  
 **10:30 pm Vision (sees all, knows all) ::** I'll keep digging.

 **10:30 pm Stature ::** @billy: when jonas finds him, what are you going to say?  
  
 **10:31 pm Wiccan17 ::** I haven't figured that part out yet. 'hi, i'm the twin brother you never knew you had, btw, someone might be out there trying to kill everybody related to our adoption?' it's like a bad lifetime movie  
  
 **10:31 pm Stature ::** i bet it'll be amazing. think of all the questions you might be able to answer for each other  
  
 **10:32 pm Patriot ::** We're better off leaving the finding and the explaining to the proper authorities.  
  
 **10:32 pm Wiccan17 ::** You're not serious, Mr 'the system is inherently biased'?  
  
 **10:33 pm Patriot ::** Racial profiling's not an issue here; you don't want to get in the way of a federal investigation! They'll nail you to the wall.  
  
 **10:33 pm Hulkling ::** Point x 2.

 **10:34 pm Wiccan17 ::** I don’t care about that. I supposedly have a brother, and he’s probably in danger. I can’t just sit around and wait.  
 ****  
10:36 pm Vision (sees all, knows all) :: It's a moot point until I can figure out where he's gone.  
  
 **10:36 pm Patriot ::** If you can figure it out.  
  
 **10:37 pm Vision (sees all, knows all) ::** Until.  
  
 **10:37 pm Stature ::** what harm can it do to help out? billy has a right to know his own family.  
  
 **10:42 pm Stature ::** where'd they go, anyway?  
  
 **10:45 pm Stature ::** guys?  
  
 **10:46 pm Patriot ::** They're either fighting about this, or making out.  
  
 **10:46 pm Vision (sees all, knows all) ::** Or fighting as a prelude to making out.  
  
 **10:48 pm Stature ::** crap; my stepdad's home. gotta go.  
  
 **10:48 pm :: Stature has left the chat**  
  
 **10:49 pm Patriot ::** I'm out too; I've got that lab report to write up.  
  
 **10:49 pm Vision (sees all, knows all) ::** See you Monday  
  
 **10:49 pm :: Patriot has left the chat**  
  
 **11:30 pm Vision (sees all, knows all) ::** When you guys come up for air, ping me. I may have found something.

 

**3 am Saturday, Midtown, NYC:**

_“I don’t know where she is!”_

_He’s lying, the falsehoods spilling from his lips. So many of them, all the same. Lying, like before, bulbous spiders, bellies swollen and gross, spinning webs of deceit. Fire cleans the cobwebs from the darkness, tongues of pain, clean and pure, the last caress they knew._

_They didn't have what I needed, couldn't answer. Wouldn’t. It's only one question, so simple; it's an insult that finding the answer should be so hard._

_“Where is Lenore James?”_

_I know he heard me, know that he knows; I can see it in his eyes, a new light._

_The rest didn’t break._

_He will._

_“I don’t know – no-one knows. She vanished! I swear, I don’t know.” The ropes cut into his wrists as he pulls; the red is entirely the wrong shade, not bright enough, not orange and yellow and flame enough._

_“You know. Someone knows, and you’re the one who kept looking. Where is Lenore James?”_

_“I don’t know!”_

_“What name is she using?”_

_“I don’t_ know _!”_

_“Where is the boy?”_

_“Please, stop – please-“_

_He knew._

_I rarely stay to watch, these days; it all becomes the same, after a while. Flesh curls from bone, blackened and charring, the way little hairs roll back first, shrink away and tighten, then crumble to dust before the pink-dark flesh follows- It's not the sight of fat sliding, melting, igniting, but the smell. Sick-sweet as it lingers in the air, charcoal and grease and muscle-turned-meat._

_A pity that it takes him so long to come up with the information. If only he had been co-operative from the beginning, all of this mess could have been avoided._

_I walk away as fire licks curls up the wall. That smell rises again, warm and thick._

_I will find them both, or this world will burn._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the personal stakes are raised. 
> 
> All love and thanks to my crack beta team, moonbrightnites, roane and frogy. This would not exist without them. At least not in a readable form.

**Chapter 4:**

**5 AM Saturday, Midtown, NYC:**

“What have we got?” Prentiss ducked under the crime tape that partially blocked the apartment door. It was still dark outside the windows, the emergency lights in the hallway dotting the smoke-stained walls with small pools of yellow light. Morgan lifted his chin to acknowledge her arrival, but it was Rossi who spoke.

“The vic’s name is Preston Sutler,” he said, nodding toward a half-charred chair sitting in the middle of the room. Shreds of burned rope still clung to the wood in some places, scuff marks on the floor indicating where the coroner and his assistants had been and gone. “He was a reporter for Newsday, worked current events.”

“So much for keeping any details under wraps.” Morgan headed for the small galley kitchen and shone his flashlight up at the ceiling, the beam picking up the dangling wires that had become familiar. “The papers will be all over this one.”

Prentiss turned where she stood, surveyed the room. The fire hadn’t spread far this time, thanks to the firewalls and the fire department’s quick arrival. They hadn’t been quick enough to save Sutler, but at least there was more evidence left behind to profile than before. “What’s his connection to the others?”

Hotch appeared out of the bedroom, one room less damaged by the fire, with a file folder in his hands. “He was the reporter originally assigned to cover the Creche investigation back when it was all unfolding,” he replied. “It looks like he kept a file with all his clippings and notes.” An officer handed him an evidence bag and he slid the folder inside. “There are folders thrown all over the place in there, and this was open on the desk.”

“Is that what the UnSub was looking for?” Prentiss took a few steps closer to get a look at the damp and smoke-stained folder in Hotch’s hands, the layers of paper inside curling around the edges as they began to dry.

“Maybe he only took the thing he needed,” Morgan suggested, rejoining the group. “Got the information he was looking for, and torched the place to cover his tracks.”

“Whatever it was, Sutler didn’t give it up easy,” the young medical examiner’s assistant approached them, eyes darting from one member of the team to another before finally settling on Hotch. “He was beaten; his jaw and nose were broken, and my guess is that it was right before his death. There may be other injuries, but those were the obvious ones. We’ll know more in a few hours.”

“He knew something,” Prentiss said. “He found something important, and he died for it.”

“Morgan, call Garcia,” Hotch instructed. “I want everything Sutler wrote about the Creche, printed, submitted, or otherwise.”

“On it,” Morgan nodded, pulling out his phone as he moved toward the window to get better reception. “Heyyy, sweet baby girl,” he purred into the phone, that ridiculous noise that Garcia never fell for, but always bent to. “I know it’s early. But we need you to-“ he paused, flashed a brilliant smile. “I _always_ need you, mama. But right now _we_ need you to run another search...”

 

**7 AM Saturday, Newsday offices, New York:**

There was nothing unusual about Preston Sutler's work desk, except for the lack of him at it. "He's a fixture around here-" The editor-in-chief cut herself off and shook her head, greying hair curling around a brass hair clip, and her jaw tight. She picked at the cuff of her blazer and began again. " _Was_ a fixture. Some of the younger reporters like to joke that Preston was installed in the building along with the original wiring. It's difficult to imagine this place without him."  
  
The papers on Sutler's desk here were all notes relating to recent stories; at least from what Prentiss could see. "Sutler had a file at home about an old story - the Creche case? Do you have any idea why he might have been working on it again?"  
  
Flinn pursed her lips and nodded. "Preston made his name with that story. God; that would be what; eighteen years ago now?"  
  
"Sixteen," Rossi supplied, perching on the edge of Sutler's desk. He glanced over it much as Emily had done, his gaze flickering across the papers, the little magnet desk toy, the photo frame with a picture of Sutler shaking hands with the second-to-last mayor.   
  
"Sixteen," Flinn corrected herself. "It was the arson cases. Some of the victims had been sources for him back then. He had never really let that story go; the loose threads always bothered him."  
  
Prentiss raised an eyebrow and Rossi looked equally interested. "What sorts of loose threads?"   
  
Flinn paused for a moment. "A few things about the forged papers, I know that. And he had a fixation on an abduction – not that everyone believed that it actually happened. I don’t think he was ever able to bring enough information together to settle the issue to his satisfaction, not after the Creche administration shredded half their records."  
  
“Who was abducted?” Rossi and Prentiss exchanged looks, but Rossi’s expression was as confused as Prentiss felt.   
  
"No-one, officially." Flinn sorted through a small stack of notebooks on the corner of the desk. "During the year the agency was falling apart, one of the infants in foster care vanished from the official records. There are intake records, and about a month’s worth of notes, and then nothing.

“Preston was convinced that one of the case workers took the baby. She left town around the same time. It was more likely to be something as simple as adoption paperwork getting lost, of course. Lord knows with all the problems with that place, one more file getting tossed or shredded wouldn’t be surprising.”

Flinn flipped the pages of the last book, frowned, and replaced the stack. "I know he kept his notes on all that business, but I don't see them here. Maybe the book is at his apartment."  
  
Prentiss scanned the room, picking out a handful of people who were either eavesdropping on the conversation, or trying to read lips. "How many of Sutler's co-workers knew about his interest in the Creche case?"  
  
"It was no secret," Flinn shook her head, glasses chain bouncing lightly on her shoulder. "I'd say most everyone who'd been here longer than a year. He used to get teased about hunting for Amelia Earhart next."   
  
"With your permission, Ms. Flinn," Prentiss said, fingertips resting on the desk. "We need to take some time to look through Mr. Sutler's desk, and have our technical analyst log in remotely to his computer." Not that they needed it, but this would be a whole lot faster if they didn’t have to start calling around for a warrant on a Saturday.  
  
Flinn hesitated, eyes darting to the computer and a dark shadow sitting low on her brow.

“We can do it with your permission now, or we can get a warrant,” Rossi said, standing and letting the jovial edge slide away from his voice. “Easy way, or hard way, Ms. Flinn.”

She didn’t answer immediately, gave them both a measuring look, then shook her head. “Get a warrant for the computer. Take what you need from his desk. I'll be in my office if you need anything else."   
  
"Ten bucks says she'll know what we dig up before we do," Rossi muttered under his breath after Flinn walked away, the sound of her clicking heels fading until it was buried under the noise of the newsroom.   
  
Prentiss looked up, and three heads ducked down behind their cubicle walls again. "That's a sucker’s bet," she replied, and Rossi smirked. "I just hope there's something here to find."

 

**9 AM Saturday, Midtown West, New York:**

_She moves so freely, so easily, as though care and caution have long since been forgotten. Through the gauzy curtain I can see her dancing to some song made silent by the panes of glass and security bars between us. Her prancings are obscene. A person who has been the cause of so much pain should be wracked by it, bent under the press of it, burning with the foreknowledge of the reckoning to come._

He _was supposed to be here, but he is not. There are cream curtains in one bedroom, curtains that she drew against the night when I sat and watched in the darkness. Ground floor apartment meant for two, four windows, two bedrooms. Blue in the other, simple and plain. A boy’s room. It sits empty._

_She may know I wait. Perhaps she moved him again, to keep him from me. The dancing and the singing, the unashamed display of the humanity she does not have, all of it could be a trick, a design to lure me into complacency._

_I will not be fooled._

_I knock and she opens. Lenore is surprised to see me. Surprised and alarmed, there is fear in her eyes when she begins to understand; that this is the first payment in a debt that has been gathering interest for a very long time._

_Her hair gleams in my fist, yellow gold coiled around my skin. Her screams- her mouth beneath my palm is wet, her lips moving even as I press down, warm and vital and alive, damn her all to hell._

_There is the scrape of teeth as she bites, but one blow ensures that she will not try such things again. No splinter of bone distracts me this time; the pulpy give of flesh under fist is enough. She collapses into my arm, the better to bring her out of here and to a place where we won’t be disturbed._

_She has many things to tell me, and I am ready to take her confession._

**10 AM Saturday, Midtown West, New York:**

 “I’ll only be a few minutes,” Teddy promised, turning his key in the lock and pushing open the outside door. “I just have to change and grab my uniform.”

Billy followed him inside the apartment building, the familiar sights and smells wrapping around him as the door closed behind him. The hall carpet was clean but frayed at the edges, the coat of white paint on the walls chosen as easy-to-clean rather than any nod to fashion. Teddy’s apartment was on the first floor, the cozy two-bedroom just big enough for him and his mom.

There were times when Billy seriously preferred the Altmans’ place to his own; he preferred the bright colours and piles of throw pillows and Mrs. Altman’s cheerful singing to the muted tones and constant rushing-around that was life with the Kaplans. Teddy must have inherited his gentle, easy-going nature from his mother, along with his blond hair.

Right now that gentleness had been replaced by confusion, as Teddy jimmied his key in the lock. Billy snapped out of his wandering thoughts before he actually crashed into Teddy. “What’s wrong?”

“Something’s wrong,” Teddy frowned, pulled the key out and tried the door. The handle turned easily, and the door creaked inward just a touch. “It’s not locked.”

“Maybe your mom’s home?” Billy hazarded a guess.

“She never leaves it unlocked.” Teddy opened the door and stepped inside, Billy following close behind. “Mom?”

Billy heard Teddy suck in air before he got inside far enough to see why.

“Aw, _shit,_ ” Teddy breathed out, his hands clenching into fists. 

The apartment had been ransacked, cupboards and drawers opened and papers strewn in unceremonious piles on the floor. Billy could see into the kitchen from where they stood. Drawers were standing open in there as well. Mrs. Altman’s purse was sitting on the end table where she always left it, but this time open and with her wallet half hanging out. She had to be home, then-

“Mrs. Altman?” Billy called out, stepping past Teddy and moving further into the living room. “Are you home?” 

There was no answer, and there wasn’t going to be one. The apartment _felt_ empty.

 “Her purse is here, Ted; why would she leave her purse here?” He closed his mouth on the words even as he said them, regretting it. She wouldn’t leave it, that was the thing – and if she wouldn’t leave it, and someone was here, then-

“Mom?” Teddy broke out of his shock and ran down the hall, shoving doors open. They slammed back, the sound echoing; one bedroom, then the other, the bathroom last. He stood at the end of the hall and shook his head, fear widening his eyes as he started back toward the living room, and Billy. “She’s not here.”

“Ted-“ There was a smear of red on the back of the couch, and now that Billy was looking at it, another down the arm, and drops on the floor, some smeared, some not, a half of a footprint. Oh, God. “I think that’s blood.”

Later, he might be a little bit proud at how he managed to keep his voice from shaking, to keep a semblance of emotional control. In the moment, all he could think about was Teddy; Teddy and Mrs. Altman and-

“We have to call the police, like, now.”

Ted already had his phone out and to his ear, and a second later Billy could hear the tinny voice of the 911 dispatcher answering the call. “My name is Teddy Altman,” Ted started, and his eyes never wavered from Billy’s, even as Billy sped down the hall to grab Teddy’s free hand. “I need help. My apartment’s been broken into, and I think something bad’s happened to my mom.”

 

**11 AM Saturday, Midtown West, New York:**

“Not that I don’t feel for the kid,” Morgan spoke quietly to Prentiss as they moved in tandem down the hallway, “but why did they ask us along on this? This has nothing to do with our investigation.” And there was still too much to wade through on the cases that actually were connected. A possible kidnapping or homicide was a horrible thing, but this was the NYPD’s catch to make, not theirs.

“Maybe not,” Prentiss shook her head and shrugged one shoulder dismissively. “But it’s a huge  coincidence if it isn’t. Think about it. Billy Kaplan’s got a connection to one UnSub, and then another one kidnaps his best friend’s mother? Our choices are either two killers working in the area who coincidentally targeted the same group of people, or we have one UnSub who’s changed MOs.”

“If Reid was here he could tell you exactly which of those was most unlikely,” Morgan pointed out with a grin, one that he dropped as they turned the corner. The boys were in the hallway, looking shaken and talking to a uniformed officer, while a couple of other cops could be seen through the open door dusting for fingerprints.

The apartment had been turned over the same as the others; Morgan could see the pattern immediately. Paperwork disturbed, drawers opened, but valuables – _purse and wallet on the end table, photographs missing from the wall but a video game system on the entertainment center_ _still there._

“Blood on the floor, the wall by the door-“ Prentiss paced out the movement, following the trail. “She fought back, got hit, struggled- then he brought her outside through the front door.”

“That’s brazen, and at midday?” Morgan whistled low.  “If this is our guy, he’s escalated fast.” He pivoted, scanning the room. The lock on the door was intact, the windows closed- “He blitzed her at the door; there’s no sign of a struggle there. He got inside and then attacked.”

“She might have known him,” Prentiss suggested. “That could explain why she opened the door.”

“One thing I don’t get,” Morgan frowned. “If this is our guy, what’s the connection to the rest of the victims? Sarah Altman is a real estate agent; her name isn’t on the list of adoptive and birth parents that Garcia sent us.”

Prentiss nodded, looked back towards the door. “And why take her, rather than burning the place down around her? Unless… middle of the day; maybe he was worried about being interrupted? Or someone noticing the fire too quickly?”

“Or he’s got another reason entirely.” Morgan crouched down to look at a pile of papers on the floor – bills, flyers, recent mail. “We need to talk to the kids. Maybe they can give us something more to go on.”

\--

The police officers were kind enough when they asked their questions, but they were carefully keeping Teddy back far enough so that he couldn’t see what the others were doing in the apartment. It was probably better that he not watch them taking samples and photographs and things, but did it have to take so _long_? They should be out there following him, finding Mom, doing _something_ other than waiting in the hall for … whatever.

The FBI showing up was unexpected, and Teddy felt Billy’s fingers tighten on his when the pair of agents headed inside. It was two of the three he had met last night, and the familiarity helped, a little. They walked back out a few minutes later, heading over toward Billy and Teddy. He straightened his shoulders, drawing himself up tall.

“Ted?” The dark-haired woman spoke first; they’d been introduced (sort of) the night before at the station.

“Yeah?” Billy’s fingers stayed laced tightly through his and he wasn’t going to give up that point of contact for anything. Not unless Billy pulled back first.

“Can you tell us what happened? Anything you can remember will help.”

Both agents were watching him, him and Billy, with an intensity that sort of crawled under his skin and stuck there. It wasn’t a bad kind of thing, not accusation, but definite interest, and curiosity, and it made him want to remember everything.

 “I don’t know,” Teddy answered, and felt the weight of their imagined disappointment already settling down on him. He tried again. “I stayed at Billy’s – at the Kaplans’ house – last night, and we were just supposed to stop and get my stuff for the game.” _The game. Shit. Not that any of that was important_ now _…_

He only half-heard his own voice as he explained, his mind buzzing with half-finished thoughts that he couldn’t let play out. He felt rather than saw Billy behind him, a constant solid line of warmth. That helped, gave him something else to focus on. Anything other than the constant underlying throb of _mom, mom, mom_.

“If we walk through the apartment,” one of the agents was asking – Morgan, that was his name – “would you be able to tell us what’s missing?”

Teddy took a breath, tried to find his calm. “Sure,” he nodded, when he could trust his voice not to jump with nerves. “I can do that.”

It wasn’t much, but what _was_ gone was weird; even the FBI seemed to agree on that. The wallet that hung on the hook by the door where his mom kept copies of stuff like insurance cards and their birth certificates _(in case of fire or flood, grab this; that was the house rule)_ ; that was gone.

So was a photo album that had mostly contained pictures of Teddy _(some of his mom, but she was usually behind the camera, so)_. A couple of pictures off the wall.

If there was anything missing from the papers that had been scattered, Teddy couldn’t tell. But her laptop, the camera, his mom’s jewellery _(except the wedding ring; she always wore that, even though his dad had died before he was born)_. All of that was still there.

The police packaged the laptop to take it and look for clues, took a photo of her off of his phone for the APB, and then Billy and Teddy had nothing more to do but sit and wait until Billy’s dad could come ( _do you have anyone to stay with? Yeah; he did)_ to pick them up.

A phone rang in the apartment and Agent Morgan answered, his voice drifting out through the open kitchen window to where Teddy and Billy were sitting on the front stoop. Billy’s hands were warm and steady on his arms, his fingers rubbing gentle circles over Teddy’s skin.

“Are you serious?” Morgan’s voice rose and fell and Teddy listened, leaned back to hear him better, nudged Billy and looked up pointedly. Billy stopped moving and listened. “When did he run?”

There was a pause, then, angrier, “How is it that social services can’t keep track of one kid? Thomas Shepherd is our only witness right now; we can’t lose him. Yeah. Prentiss and I are about done here.” A final pause. “It’s definitely connected, Hotch. Garcia’s running some searches now. We’ll be there in ten.”

Billy’s eyes were storm-filled and dark when Teddy looked down again, the warm brown shadowed into black. “Come on,” Billy murmured, glancing at the door to the building and their theoretical escort, the uniformed officer leaning on the railing and talking in his phone.

“Come on where?” Teddy asked, but it wasn’t like he was going to have a choice about it. Billy had that look that meant he had his mind made up, and _that_ meant that Teddy’s two choices were to go along for the ride, or wait and watch while Billy did it – whatever _it_ was – anyway.

“You heard him,” Billy leaned in, palms still pressed against Teddy’s forearms, elbows digging into his knees. “This has something to do with the case, and now they’ve lost Thomas. And if he knows something that can help find your mom, or if he’s in trouble too- we have to _do_ something.”

“Do what?” Teddy shook his head and frowned, leaning in as well. He dropped his gaze to study Billy’s hands, his own fingers, the scuff marks on the knees of his cargos. “Eli’s right, Bill; we can’t get in the middle of an investigation. They’re looking for my mom, they’ll find her.”

Except that he heard the doubt in his own voice, the strain of it, how much he wanted to _move_ , to _do_ something, to fight for her himself instead of handing it over to the agents and the police and the rest.

Billy heard it too.

“Not if they don’t find Thomas,” Billy said, eyes alight now with fresh purpose. “That’s something we can do. Jonas said he can trace him through the cell number he found. We find him, bring him back, and then he can tell them whatever they need to know to find your mom.” Billy was good at that, at making absolutely insane things sound plausible, possible, even _right_. “Besides,” he finished, “it’s better than waiting around here doing nothing. We can _help_.”

“Fine,” Teddy nodded reluctantly. “Let’s go.” He stood, grabbed his bag _._

Billy fumbled to his feet, pitched his voice loud so he could be heard through the window. "Hi, dad. Yeah, we're ready to go." One last check behind them and then they ran, ducked around the corner, and sprinted away. Billy was already on the phone. “Jonas, dude, get everyone, meet us at the diner. We need your help.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the girls show up, truths are revealed, and things get rolling.
> 
> Forever love to my betas, roane. moonbrightnites and frogy. If there's an error, it's because I ignored a suggestion of theirs somewhere.

  **Chapter 5:**

**Noon, Saturday, Springfield, NJ:**

_Step on a crack, break your mother’s back._ No-one would really blame him, Tommy decided, if he stepped on all the cracks he could find.

The sidewalk stretched out before him with beautifully even-spaced ones, broken edges in the grey concrete. The sky was grey, the road was grey, the buildings on either sides were grey, the clouds gathering and blocking out any sun that might have reflected off windows or added some warmth to the air.

The wind bit at him, sharp-toothed, and he shoved his hands further into the pockets of his jacket. The hoodie underneath helped some, but what he really needed was gloves. Maybe a hat. Definitely a cup of coffee. He could wrap his hands around the mug, heat seeping right down into his bones, and let the caffeine take the edge off.

The bench by the bus stop was dry when he collapsed onto it for a minute. Just for a minute, while he figured things out. His phone was smooth and warm against his fingers and he pulled it out and flipped it open. No missed calls, no new messages. No kidding.

Frank and Mary had the number; it had been one of the things Frank had insisted on, way back when, even though Tommy was the one who had been paying for the phone. Frank had insisted on that, too.

Frank and Mary had the number, but there was no chance that they would call. Miss Campbell from the group home might; she had always seemed to like him. At least she’d had a smile on her face at the beginning of every appointment and never freaked at him for just sitting there silently during the sessions.

His thumb caressed the buttons; everything in his address book, nothing on his speed-dials. There didn’t seem to be much point.

He’d worn out his welcome at Josh’s cousin’s place. Not that Josh had said anything, but he hadn’t needed to. The signs were there; no-one needed some weird kid crashed out on their couch for longer than a week, even if he had tried – a little – to make himself useful.

Better to hit the road while it was still his own idea, let the ever-present itch under his skin be the reason he was putting boots to pavement, instead of waiting for the boot up the ass.

He dialled, by rote rather than out of any decision on his part, waited for the familiar click and whine. The number had been for the old house, the voice mail linked to a phone number that would be reassigned any day now.

It had still worked two days ago.

_You’ve reached the Shepherds, Frank, Mary and Tommy. We can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message at the tone._

They’d never changed the message.

Whatever. It’s not like that meant anything.

He pushed himself off the bench and kept moving, no destination in mind, he just wanted _motion_. He broke into a run, the sidewalk flying by underneath, chewing up the yards and spitting them out behind him, his bag thump-thumping against his hip and his feet slamming down against the grey and the grey slamming back up against him, and this was _pure_.

The sidewalk ended and Tommy skidded to a halt, jumped up onto the curb that was all that remained. His backpack thumped against his hip, his phone was still in his hand, forgotten. He hit the button to disconnect.

Stopped.

Looked around.

He had nowhere in particular to go, other than ‘away’ – away from the group home and pitying glances and people who knew both too much and nothing about him at all.

_He’s the one who was given back._

_Two sets of parents didn’t want him._

_So what’s wrong with him? I bet it’s something awful._

Alone was infinitely better.

He glanced up, brushed the fall of bleach-white hair from his brow, surveyed the businesses that lined the street. Personal trainer, sub shop, hair place- there. The little cafe would work for coffee and a chance to figure out his next move. He had $127 in his wallet, and five months until he was eighteen and out of the system’s reach. Totally doable.

Allowing himself to be buoyed, for a moment, by the suggestion of optimism, Tommy pushed open the door and walked in to the light and the warmth.

**12:30 PM Saturday, Downtown Manhattan, NY:**

  
There were four of them clustered by the diner door when Eli’s bus pulled up, Cassie’s blonde ponytail brightly visible where her head was bent down against Billy’s dark hair. Teddy looked like hell, half-curled practically into Billy’s lap and his fingers knotted white through Billy’s as he talked.

“...and she was just _gone_.”

So Jonas hadn’t been messing with him; that was good to know, and awful at the same time. It would have been a lot better if this had been some colossal practical joke. “Teddy?”

Teddy looked up and actually smiled a little when he saw Eli, despite the grim look in his eye otherwise. “Hey.”

Eli dropped down to sit on Teddy’s other side, nudged him lightly with his shoulder to fill in all the things that he didn’t have words for. Cassie curled in behind them, and Jonas was... Jonas was nose-deep in his laptop again, propping the damn thing against the brick exterior wall and muttering under his breath as he did something. “Can’t you unplug from that thing for a minute?” Eli snapped, glaring.

“Nope,” Jonas shook his head firmly. “I got a hit, and I am not letting him get away this time.”

“Letting who get away?” Eli asked. Not even Jonas would be so oblivious as to be playing games right now.

“Thomas Shepherd,” Jonas replied, grinning with satisfaction, “is calling someone on his phone. Which means I have a lock, and we have a location. He’s currently hanging out in deepest, darkest Springfield, which means we have an hour to get our collective butts down there and smoke him out.”

“He won’t have his phone on the whole time, though-“ Cassie frowned. “How are we going to find him after that?”

“I have a location to start with now, we can worry about the next step when we get into the right township,” Jonas replied confidently.

This was going to end in disaster.

“Who’s going to New Jersey?” Eli asked, the main question that no-one else seemed to be wondering about. “In case you haven’t noticed, none of us have cars, and a cab would cost a literal fortune.”

“We are.” Billy’s jaw was set. “We need to find Thomas. The FBI hasn’t found him yet, but Jonas did. So we’re going to go get him and bring him back and make him tell them what he knows.”

That was ridiculous.

“That’s ridiculous,” Eli said, folding his arms in front of him. “Why not just call the cops and tell them that we have information? Let them go do the driving and pick him up.”

Cassie shook her head from where she was standing, looking down the street as though watching for someone. “We tried that. The officer on the phone called Jonas ‘kid’ and told him to stop wasting their time with pranks. I even tried calling my stepdad, but he didn’t pick up.”

There was always Doctor K.; Eli looked at Billy, but Billy was already shaking his head before Eli could ask the question. “No way. My mom’s already yelled at me for even asking about what’s going on. She’d ground me for life before I could tell her anything, and we’d be back to square one.”

“We’re on our own, Eli.” And little, stubborn Cassie lifted her chin defiantly.

A sleek silver car pulled up and parked at the curb beside them, and the sinking sensation of being steamrolled crystallized into a certainty. The girl in the driver’s seat was perfection; long dark hair loose over her shoulders, purple-tinted sunglasses perched on her nose, her hands resting on the bottom of the steering wheel and nowhere at all near 2-and-10.

Kate. Cassie’s BFF since forever, Billy’s slightly more rational partner in a dozen hare-brained schemes, and for Eli, the crush that wouldn’t die.

“Oh, no.” Eli shook his head, and was ignored. Cassie skipped over to the car and stuck her head in the open window and claimed a hug, while Jonas hauled a bag over his shoulder. It clinked suspiciously.   
  
 Teddy shifted beside him, rose to his feet. “So this is really a thing that we’re doing?” he asked Billy, and it was beyond weird to hear him so hesitant.

Billy grabbed Teddy’s hands in his. “Yes. We’ll find him, and he’ll help the FBI find _her_ , and then everything will be okay.” He said it with such firm conviction that Eli couldn’t help but believe him.

Teddy’s face softened, and he pulled Billy into a fierce hug.   
  
“Hey, guys. Are we going or what?” Kate had opened her door and was leaning her arms on the roof of her car, waiting for them.

And they were actually doing this, about to go barrelling down the turnpike crammed into Kate’s car like clowns at the circus. One last chance to talk some sense into someone.

“I think we should try calling the cops one more time,” Eli put his foot down, metaphorically, and stood up, literally. “Or the FBI. Let the authorities handle this properly.”

Jonas slid his bag into the backseat of the car, setting it down on the floorboard.

“Don’t tell me you’re wimping out on us, Eli,” Kate stared at him over the rim of her glasses, ridiculous purple things that probably cost more than he earned in six months. “Best case scenario, we save Mrs. Altman. Worst case, we find nothing, waste a tank of gas and come home, and the FBI have to do the hard work themselves.”

“No, worst case is we all get arrested for compromising an investigation,” Eli objected.

“It wouldn’t stick.” And how could she be so perfect and confident, and so annoying at the same time? His better judgement warred with his impulse to get in there, to go, to protect them all (from themselves, if nothing else).

"It's not that simple, Kate!” Eli shook his head. “Most of us don't have family money to buy our way out of trouble. And if we end up with criminal records, we can all kiss college goodbye."   
  
"Then stay here," Kate shrugged, but her eyes never left Eli's face and he could feel her disappointment, tangible and fierce. "No-one's twisting your arm, Eli. But Ted needs us."   
  
His gut twisted and clenched, he looked away. Looked over Kate's shoulder at the guys, at the grim shadows under Teddy’s eyes. "I didn't say I wouldn't help," Eli pointed out after a second ticked by. "Just that this particular plan is doomed to painful failure."  
  
"You have a better one? That doesn't involve sitting around and waiting?"  
  
And ... yeah. No. "No," he admitted, after a handful of seconds ticked by. "I don't."   
  
Kate smiled, bright and blinding and beautiful, and god, he was so screwed. "Then get your ass in the car before Jonas loses the signal or the FBI realize that they’ve lost the boys."   
  
"I call shotgun," Eli grumbled, returning Cassie's gleeful grin with a tight half-smile.   
  
"What, you don't want to sit on Teddy's lap?" Jonas folded himself into the backseat, and Cassie pushed in against his side.   
  
"Billy would so take him down," Cassie teased, then reached forward between the front seats to squeeze Eli's shoulder. Teddy slid in on her other side, Billy on his lap, and wrapped his arms around Billy's waist.   
  
Teddy rested his chin on Billy's shoulder, and the look of simple gratitude that overlaid the panic in his eyes was enough to finish Eli's internal battle. "I'm glad you're coming," Teddy said simply.   
  
"Yeah, well," Eli sighed, hauling on his seatbelt as Kate craned her neck to watch for an opening, then slid them into traffic. "Think of all the free time I'll have next year once college applications stop being an issue."

Billy snorted a laugh, but Teddy only smiled, thin and tired. Then he held his knuckles out, looked at Eli with eyes that said _I get you._

Eli smiled, and bumped Teddy’s fist with his own. _We’ve got your back._   

 

**12:30 PM Saturday, BAU Offices, Quantico, VA:**

  
The hum and purr of Garcia's multitude of computers was the soundtrack of her life, the electronic white noise soothing and familiar. She spun in her chair to call up the search results on one of her main screens, the others flickering and jumping with more unspooling data. The screen flashed red, and Garcia bounced in her chair, clapped her hands with glee and stabbed blindly at her keyboard with the non-googly-eyed end of the fuzzy pink pen in her hand.   
  
The video call opened with a _bing_ and she blew a kiss at Derek Morgan as he backed away from the screen at the other end. "Now there's the face I dream about waking up to," she teased, but Hotch entered the frame before Morgan could reply. "Sir!"  
  
Hotch's tie and jacket were off, that meant stress. Garcia wasn't a profiler, couldn't do that thing where they looked at which of your nails was broken and then told you what you'd had for dinner last night, but some things about her team, she noticed. "What have you got for us, Garcia?" Hotch asked without preamble, and that was her cue to switch into super-awesome-Garcia mode.   
  
"I have got oodles of news for you, sir," she began. "The victim, Sarah Altman? She's not Sarah Altman, for starters."  
  
"What do you mean?" Reid was off-screen, but she could hear his chair shuffle and she glanced to where he could have been.   
  
"I mean that Sarah Altman, with that social security number, was a fifty year old who died from breast cancer in 1988." She called up the files, numbers highlighted, and sent them to Hotch's desktop. "So when I saw that, I ran the new picture against my facial recognition software, and-"  
  
"You got a hit?" That was Morgan again, looking so happy, and didn't that look on his face just make her day?   
  
"I did, oh love of my life. The new-and-improved Sarah Altman is actually - drum roll, please - Lenore James," she opened another set of pictures for display. "A social worker from New Jersey who worked at the Creche, and dropped off the grid in 1992.”  
  
"Garcia, you're the best."  
  
"Praise from you is a balm to my soul, Derek. But there's more!"  
  
An alarm was chiming in the background and she ignored it for the moment. Whatever search had finished running could wait. "I cross-referenced Sutler's notes, and the name Lenore James appears at least a dozen times. According to him, she was responsible for abducting a kid who was under her care.  
  
"Young Derek Whitter-" Garcia's fingers flew across the keyboard and the pictures changed, this time medical records spread out across her desktop - and by extensions, Hotch's. "-excellent choice of name, was in foster care from the age of six months to eleven months, due to parental abuse. According to the few records Sutler was able to find, baby Derek had his arm broken during a scheduled visitation, and a few days after that, both James and the baby vanished. Like, entirely vanished, never to be seen again. A year after that, Sarah Altman and her young son Theodore show up in Seattle. Six years after that, they move to New York."   
  
"She wanted to protect him," Reid shuffled into view on the edge of her screen, grabbing for a whiteboard marker. "She assumed new identities for both of them, to keep him out of the system and safe."  
  
"What about the birth parents?" Hotch asked, leaning forward and resting his hands on the table.   
  
"His mother, Anelle Whitter-" Garcia brought up the file again. "Died five months ago, in a car accident. DUI. Dad is listed as Mark Vale, also deceased. Drug overdose back in 1995. God," Garcia sat back, a lump in her throat, a memory of a knock at the door. "He really is alone."   
  
"So it's not the father looking for him," Morgan said, grabbing a notepad and scribbling some things down. "Any other surviving relatives?"  
  
"Got a brother on the mother's side." Garcia snapped back into work-goddess-mode. Magic now, brood later. Or wine later, either way. "Kurt Whitter, age 43, used to work for Reba Lighting and Electric in the beautiful city of Camden, quit the week his sister died."   
  
Morgan nodded, unsurprised. "Her death was the stressor. Vehicle?"   
  
"Negatory. He had a company van which is back with the company, and the only car registered to his sister was the one involved in the crash, and that was totalled."   
  
"So we have no idea what he's driving. I’ll send a general APB." Morgan ripped the top page off his notepad and left the field of view. A door opened and closed somewhere off-screen.   
  
"Do you think he knows?" Garcia asked. "That Sarah's not his biological mother?"   
  
"I don't think so," Reid shook his head. "She went to a lot of trouble to hide the truth from everyone."  
  
Hotch grimaced, not that unusual from his normal expression, unless you knew how to look. "And now, that effort may get her killed."   
  
The door reopened and Morgan reappeared, a shorter, older woman with dark hair following him closely behind. She looked stressed, and more than a little exhausted. "We've got a problem, Hotch," Morgan interrupted. "The kids are in the wind."   
  
Hotch and Reid looked up. "Altman and Kaplan?" It was phrased like a guess, but Hotch didn't make guesses.   
  
"Jeff was supposed to pick them up at the apartment, but when he got there, the boys were already gone," dark-hair-with-stress replied. "He assumed they were on their way back here."   
  
"Officer Casey heard them talking to someone when they left, assumed it was Mr. Kaplan," Morgan added, and Garcia could just feel his frustration, see it in the tight set of his shoulders.   
  
"Billy's not answering his phone," Dr. Kaplan continued. "If they've been taken as well-"  
  
Hotch shook his head, and glanced at the screen - and Garcia. "Let's not jump to conclusions yet; they could easily have gone somewhere to regroup for a little while. Can you call around to Billy's friends, Doctor? Maybe they've gone to someone's house. Or another parent might have seen them."   
  
She nodded jerkily, every tendon in her neck tight and her face rigid with worry. "Yes, of course. I'll go do that."   
  
Once Dr. Kaplan was out of the room again, Hotch's sympathetic-face vanished. "Reid, have Burdick get an APB ready to issue on the boys, as persons of interest only. Don’t send it yet. Garcia, put a trace on William Kaplan and Theodore Altman's phones. Find them."   
  
Order received. "You got it, sir," Garcia replied, and severed the connection. More searches to run, and hope to God that the kids called someone in the next fifteen minutes. If not, there were red light cameras and street cameras, footage she could pull, gotta get someone on that. Pull up bank accounts; some kids had cards these days, or access to family accounts, so that was another option, which also opened up the possibility of ATM cameras…

Garcia’s fingers flew across her keyboard, windows and files popping up across a half-dozen monitors. Behind her on a subsidiary screen, a red 'trace complete' note flashed, for the moment unnoticed.

 

**1:30 pm, Saturday, 19 th Precinct:**

Without knowing anything about their vehicle – or even if they had access to one – it was going to be almost impossible to track down a pair of teenagers who didn’t want to be found. JJ caught herself staring at Reid’s carefully marked-off map again, and turned away. Neither Billy nor Ted had their cell phones on, for one thing. What teenager turned his phone off unless he was either grounded, or had gone to ground? Doctor Kaplan’s calls had turned up nothing, and now they had officers canvassing the kids’ usual haunts and coming up with another big fat zero.

In the meantime, they were no closer to finding Lenore than they had been an hour ago. Garcia had found an apartment address for Whitter in the Bronx and Prentiss and Rossi were already en route, while Morgan and Hotch were headed for his last known address in New Jersey. It left JJ to wrangle the precinct and Reid going over Sutler’s notes, the pile of papers in front of him gradually expanding outward to cover the table in semi-organized concentric circles.    

So when Hotch’s computer beeped and Garcia’s face appeared, it was more than a relief, it was a godsend. “Hey, Garcia.” JJ pushed her chair around the table so that she could be seen in the webcam more clearly, and gave Garcia a hopeful smile. Burdick stepped in behind, setting down the file they’d been going over, and nodded. “Have you got anything new?”

“I do, as a matter of fact,” Garcia replied, and JJ leaned in. Garcia was frazzled; more so than usual, anyway, waving a pen with a bird on one end that bobbled on a spring when she spoke. “I had a couple of the interns running video from the toll roads leading into and out of the city, and I got a hit.” She tapped furiously at her keyboard for a second and a series of grainy images popped up on the screen. “This was taken about ten minutes ago at the toll booth on the I-78 West. Unless I need my prescription renewed, are those not our boys in the back seat there?”

The pictures were small and poor quality. JJ had to squint, and she leaned to the side to let Burdick get a better look. The silver car had been caught on-side, Teddy Altman and Billy Kaplan visible sitting behind a dark-haired driver, more kids packed in the car along with them. “Garcia, can you run your facial recognition software to get IDs on the other four?” JJ asked, sitting back when Burdick placed his hand on her shoulder.

Burdick shook his head. “That won’t be necessary, Agent Jareau.” His face contorted for a minute in – disappointment? “I know those kids; all of them. The blonde girl in the back seat is my stepdaughter, Cassie. The driver is her best friend, Kate Bishop. The other boys are Eli Bradley, and Jonas Pym.” He said that last name with a dark scowl that made JJ wonder if she should fear for the kid’s safety when Burdick got his hands on him.

“These kids are a close-knit group.” It wasn’t a question, just a prompt to keep him talking, and she either needed to spend more time around profilers, or less – she was starting to pick up too many of their tricks. JJ pushed her chair back to put a little more space between herself and Burdick, and let her see his face more clearly.

He nodded. “Cassie and Billy have known each other for years, through the precinct. They were thick as thieves when they were small. Cassie’s father – Scott Lang.” He paused, but only for a second. “He was a cop as well. Got himself killed in the line of duty. If anything happens to Cassie, I don’t know what Peggy would do.”  He rubbed his forehead, everything about him tight and tense and unhappy. “That whole pack hang out together too much, and they egg each other on into stupid, reckless things.”

“In my experience,” JJ replied, “Teenagers don’t need a lot of encouragement to do stupid and reckless things. I think it comes in the DNA.” She put a sympathetic hand on his arm, and he dropped his head. “Do you have any idea where they might be going?”

He shook his head. “Into New Jersey? I can’t even begin to guess.”

“They could be heading for the adoption agency,” JJ guessed, “but that building was sold a long time ago.” JJ looked back at the screen and Garcia glanced up from one of her other monitors. JJ could feel her pulse picking up speed; she had something concrete to latch onto, which was better than chasing ghosts.

Contingency plans slotted into place, she had four, no, five things to do immediately, twelve that would spin off of those, and first and foremost among them- “We need Kate Bishop’s license plate and car registration, Garcia,” JJ requested, “and fill Hotch in.” She turned back to Burdick. “I think it’s time to send out that APB.”

 

**1:30 pm, Saturday, somewhere near Newark, New Jersey:**

The highway wasn’t too busy, thank god, and they flew along a few miles over the speed limit. Kate was definitely doing it specifically to drive him nuts. Eli glared at her and she just grinned, giving him a look over the rim of her glasses. The speedometer edged up another notch. “Feeling the need for speed, Eli? You keep staring at the dash.”  

“You’re going to get us pulled over,” Eli pointed out helpfully.

“You worry too much.” But a half-minute later their speed edged down slightly, and he sat back in the passenger side seat, mollified.

“Crap, I lost it again,” Jonas complained and Eli craned his neck to look behind him, just in time to get half-clobbered by a metal can that Cassie was pushing forward between the two front seats.

It was mounted on a stand with flashing lights. A pair of wires trailed down from the can, and duct tape was wrapped around the whole thing, a strange blend of a Frankenstein experiment and something you’d see on Mythbusters. Neither of those options inspired a lot of confidence. “The hell?”

“I need you to hold that out the window,” Jonas instructed, balancing his laptop open on his knees while Cassie tried to untangle the wires. He looked up when Eli didn’t move, blinking at him. “As high as you can get it, and hold it there. Kate, can you get off the highway and – I dunno – find something residential?”

Billy laughed, though there wasn’t much joy in it, shifting on Teddy’s lap. Kate veered sideways across three lanes, heading for an exit and Billy yelped, grabbing Teddy’s shoulder to steady himself. “You finally made a ray-gun? What’s your first target in your quest for ultimate world domination?”

“Today New Jersey,” Cassie intoned solemnly, “tomorrow the world.”

Kate hit the button to send Eli’s window rolling down. “If that thing is carrying any form of high-test firepower, Pym, you’re walking home.” But Eli recognized the slightly manic glint in her eye that suggested she was thinking along different lines entirely.

“It’s an antenna.” Eli could practically feel the eye-roll burning through the back of his head rest. “I lost wi-fi when we hit the highway and I need to see if Shepherd has moved again.”

The wires snaked over Eli’s lap and he propped his elbow in the window. The wind from the highway speeds battered at his hand, and he shook his head. “Not gonna work.”

“Drive slow,” Jonas ordered, “and Eli, get the cantenna on the roof, k?”

The airstream slowed down as they turned onto a street lined with houses and Kate dropped speed. Eli grumbled and muttered and shifted up to try and reach higher, propping the antenna half out of the window and as high up onto the car roof as he could reach.

“Is it working?” he heard Cassie ask, but didn’t look around to see what Jonas’ reply was.

“Maybe Teddy will have better-“ Eli started to say. But Teddy was staring out the window, his eyes glazed over and fixed on some faraway point. “Never mind,” he murmured, tucked his ankle under him to press himself up higher, and sat the cantenna on the roof of Kate’s car.

“Wait!” Jonas raised his voice, and Kate slammed on the brakes. Eli jolted forward, Billy came close to toppling out of Teddy’s lap; and Cassie let out an ‘eep!’ of protest. “Stop here,” he added, grinning. “Give me three minutes, the cantenna five degrees to the left, and that Red Bull you keep stashed in your backpack, Billy. I’m going to make some magic.”

 

**2:00 pm, Saturday, The Bronx:**

Whitter’s apartment was in a building that only the most polite of people would call ‘run-down.’ ‘Disaster area’ was more appropriate, and frankly Rossi was amazed that the landlord actually cared enough to file the records that Garcia had managed to find. Black stains creeping up the walls in the hallway announced the reason for the overpowering smell of damp, and the tile floor was stained with a hundred unidentifiable things. Whitter was on a month-to-month lease, had been here for two months now, and from the looks of the mailbox (empty) and the newspaper at the door (today’s), he was still kicking around.

They knocked, announced, then kicked the door in with extreme pleasure – at least on Rossi’s part – and he had to admit that he was more than a little disappointed not to find the bastard at home. The apartment was all of one room, a futon in the corner passing for a bed, an arrhythmic clicking coming from an old bar fridge that was groaning its way towards death.

There were two other doors. Rossi wrenched one open, his firearm up, but there was no way for a person to hide in the half-empty shelves of the linen closet. “Clear,” Prentiss announced from the bathroom, and she reappeared with a headshake and a frown. “We missed him.”

“But not by much. There’s just the one ad circular at the door, and it’s this morning’s. He left last night or early, before the delivery came through.”

The place was dim, threadbare curtains drawn, but even in the faint light Whitter’s obsession was splayed out for them across every surface. The walls were plastered with images, newspaper cuttings and pages pulled from notebooks, the torn edges marking their origins.

“Now we know where Sutler’s notebook went. I wonder where the rest of it is?” Prentiss turned to look behind them at the small painted wooden table piled high with scraps of paper and scrawled notes, and brushed a few of the pages aside with a gloved hand.

“Not just the notebook.” Rossi pointed to a couple of the images on the wall: photographs of a woman and infant, her dress and hairstyle marking it as early 1990s, maybe late 1980s. Some cuttings from newspapers regarding the troubles with the Creche, with Preston Sutler’s byline circled. A couple of computer-generated age-ups, variations on the same young man printed and plastered beside each other, over and over, and each of them vaguely familiar.

“Prentiss, look at this.” Rossi gestured, and she moved over to stand beside him again. “This kid remind you of anyone?”

Prentiss nodded, slowly. “None of the images are quite right, but if you take them together – they could be Ted Altman, or someone related to him. Do you think this is a photograph of him and his mother?”

“I’d be willing to bank on it.” Rossi nodded. “Whitter’s looking for his nephew, and he took Lenore James in order to find him.”

“That explains why he didn’t kill her,” Prentiss tensed, and she met Rossi’s eyes. “And it means there’s a good chance that she’s still alive.”

“But only until he gets what he wants – or he decides that she’s not going to give him the information that he needs.” Rossi glanced at his watch, the swoop of the second hand now marking a distant countdown. “Given his track record, I don’t think we can count on him having a whole lot of patience with her. It’s possible that she has only a few hours to live.”

Rossi thumbed the speed dial button set for Aaron Hotchner as he pulled the phone from his pocket. “Hotch and Morgan are en route to Whitter’s old place now. Call Reid and see if he can narrow down our search area again. And Garcia, see if she’s come up with anything new. He’s looking for the boy, and knows where he lives. Whitter won’t have gone far.”

 

**2:00 pm, Saturday:**

_I expected… what did I expect? To see a monster in the woman who stole my blood, to see evil and heartlessness and avarice all collated._

_To feel guilt, perhaps, or to be reminded of my own humanity when I came face to face with Anelle’s murderer. Not this; I see only clarity in the flame, in my duty._

_To smell blood and smoke and taste ash upon my tongue, to see my sister’s face as she burned, as she must have burned. That, at least, I have._

_Anelle!_

_She might have survived the crash, the fire, even as she dangled so that the blood flowed to her head, hung by her belt as the fire licked and tasted and blackened skin so pale and pure._

_I would have loved her still, nursed her back. Had she wanted to live, she would have fought. The way Lenore fights now, and for the same reason._

_Lenore has the son that she stole from Anelle, the reason to live that my sister was denied. And so the fire that I hold beneath her fingers licks at flesh, turns soft pink skin hard and red, blushing bright and thick. I see Anelle, the metal crumpled and folded around her._

_They said she did not scream as she burned._

_Lenore will scream as she burns. But not before I find him. In her memory, I will have us reunited. Blood calls to blood, and I will bring him home._


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the twins meet, and some things don't quite go as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forever love to my betas, roane, moonbrightnites and frogy. And just for the record, I finished the last of the edits today, so the next two updates are officially ready to go. Tune in over the next two weeks to see how it all ends, same bat-time, same bat-channel.

**Chapter 6:**

**2:00 pm, Saturday, Springfield, NJ:**

It was amazing how quickly a lifetime could be reduced to ash. How twenty minutes – or had it been longer? Everything was blurry now, even just four months later. How twenty minutes of flame could take a structure down to its barest essence, lay bare the brick and steel bones beneath the shell for the world to see.

The old house had been taped off for ages, insurance not willing to pay up until it could be proven that Tommy hadn’t been to blame, the place uninhabitable until the money was there for repairs, and then- well.

More than just the house’s bones had been exposed, hadn’t they? Now Frank and Mary were fighting over every dollar, the house was still here, plastic sheets over the smoke-hollow roof a half-assed cover against the wind and the rain, and Tommy was ash.

He sank down on the stoop, leaned his shoulder tentatively against the column, stared up at the porch roof extending overhead, smoke-stained black and grey. At least the tree-house was untouched; how much of his stuff was still up there? How much had been carted away during the investigation, looking for cans of gasoline, traces of ... god knows what. Explosives? Hit lists? Secret diaries? They probably hadn’t thought much of his small stash of food, the video games, the handful of magazines he’d stolen from the box on the floor of Frank’s closet.

 _Whatever._ Travelling light was better; alone was better. And _actually_ alone was better than being alone and not knowing it. There’s less to be surprised about. There’s nothing left for anyone to take away.

A car pulled into the driveway. Some dumbass getting lost and needing space to make a turn?

The doors opened and people got out; kids his age. Tommy straightened, grabbed the straps of his backpack, tensed. They were all on his right; he could run to the left, get around the back of the house, hit the path that cut across the Masons’ yard.

“Thomas Shepherd?” A black kid, tall-ish, was frowning at him as he drew closer. More of them followed, two girls _\- woah, on the legs on the brunette_. Little blonde, hugging close to a white guy with a buzz cut. And two more on the other side of the car, big blond jock and-

And – his brain skittered sideways, _yeahsurerightoutofyourfuckingmind_. A dark-haired guy, about his age and height. Similar haircut. Different colouring. “They’re like mirrors of each other,” he heard blonde-ponytail breathe out.   

“Tommy,” he corrected. No-one called him Thomas except his parents, and that- _yeah_. “Who the hell are you?”

“Billy Kaplan. I’m-“ the guy paused, swallowed, took a deep breath. “I’m your brother.”

“Bullshit.” Tommy cracked the answer back, whip-fast and stinging. “I don’t have a brother. I’m a one-and-only, broke-the-mould kind of guy.”

Billy took a step forward, and Tommy resisted the urge to take a step back up the stairs. “Look at us, Tommy. We’re twins. Wanda Lehnsherr is our birth mother. You got adopted first. I ended up with a family in New York.” He was earnest, so fucking earnest, brown eyes wide and pleading. Tommy had never seen that expression in his own mirror. “Doesn’t any of this sound familiar?”

“You seriously buy that?” Tommy asked over Billy’s shoulder, looking over the rest of his Scooby gang. He looked back at Billy, then came further down the stairs. Having his feet on the ground gave him somewhere to run, if things got weird. “No-one separates twins,” he scoffed.

“These guys did.” He was a persistent little twerp, Tommy would give him that. “The agency was on the take – they got paid more for single adoptions than for multiples. Tommy, look at us! We’re identical.”

No. _Nonono._ Not another new and fucked up thing. “Not a chance in hell,” Tommy said, making a show of looking Billy up and down, and letting the smirk ­grow on his face. _See? I’m not a nice guy. You don’t want to claim me._ “For one thing, I’m much better looking.”

“This was a waste of time.” That pronouncement came from the kid who had gotten out of the car first.

Kid-with-buzzcut came closer. “The family reunion can wait, Bill; we’re on a deadline here.”

The leggy brunette had been looking behind him, her eyes roaming over the burned-out shell, the ragged caution tape, the trampled mud in place of flowerbeds. “Kate, by the way. That’s Cassie, Jonas, Eli. Teddy. You’ve met Billy. This was your house?”

“Yeah. Until some asshole with a Zippo took exception to the decor. Can’t say as I blame him, but there are easier ways to redecorate.” She gave him a look over the rims of her sunglasses, like she knew he was totally full of shit, and he grinned.

“Your biting wit must have made you a lot of friends on the inside,” Billy said, scowling.

Cassie glared at him. “Knock it off, Billy. He’s got no reason to trust us right now-”

And wasn’t that just precious? “I can fight my own battles, princess.”

“GUYS!” Teddy’s bellow was thundering, and the group fell silent. He was flushed red, breathing heavily, and he looked about thiiiiiis far from actually ripping someone’s arm out of its socket, wookie-style, if he didn’t get what he wanted.

Tommy weighed his options. He shut up.

Teddy took a couple of steps that put him right into the middle of the group, leaving Billy a couple of steps behind. He loomed over Tommy, his eyes ablaze. “Look. I’ve been patient with all this, but we need you right fucking now. The guy who burned down your house? He kidnapped my mom. And you’re only one on the planet who saw anything, or knows anything. So this is how it’s going to work. You’re going to call the FBI, like _now_ , and tell them whatever it is that you saw that night that you didn’t tell the police.”

“What makes you think I saw anything?” Tommy asked. Red and orange and smoke flashed behind his eyes, the ropes of the ladder burning his hands as he slid down, the taste of bile and fear and smoke mingling in his nose and mouth.

“You had to.” And Teddy was pleading now, not threatening. “Because if you didn’t, my mom is as good as dead.”

 _Don’t give this to me, don’t put this on me, what makes you think I can fix anything-_ “Sharp reasoning, bro. And you figured a road trip to pick up a total stranger was the solution to your problems?”

Billy pushed his way into the space between them, eyes blazing. “No, we thought that a witness to a crime might actually be interested in helping to catch the guy responsible.”

“And how are you get involved in this? Are you his PR guy?” Tommy laid the sarcasm on thick, a last-ditch effort.  

“His boyfriend.” Hunh; well, that was another way they weren’t identical.

Which was because they _weren’t_ identical. They weren’t _anything._ Billy was just some guy who wanted something.

But Billy was braced for something now, the lines of his body drawn taut, fists balled up. Fight or flight, all too familiar. One way they _were_ the same. Tommy didn’t react, not the way Billy was ready for, and slowly, Billy’s shoulders unknotted, just a little.

“That’s what you guys are here for?” Tommy cocked his head at Kate. At least she wasn’t looking at him like he was a criminal or a science experiment. “To make me turn myself in to the feds?”

“Not turn yourself in.” Kate shook her head. “Just tell them what you know. Tommy, come back with us.”

 “Not a chance.”

“I told you he wouldn’t go along with this.” Eli was on the ‘criminal’ side of things, obviously enough, while Cassie just kept looking between him and Billy. He gave it five minutes before she tried to swab for DNA samples.  

Kate glared at him. “Shut up, Eli. Tommy. Where were you planning on going before we got here?”

“Nowhere. Everywhere,” he gestured widely. “My life’s an open road, gorgeous. Just crammed full of possibility.”

He was so crammed full of shit.

She took off her sunglasses and looked at him, and the world canted sideways on its axis. “Seriously.” Her voice was dry, but then it softened to something more real. She had amazing eyes. “You can take off now, go wandering down your lonely open road, and see how far that gets you. Or you can sack up, and come with us, and help us save the day.

“Teddy needs you. Mrs. Altman needs you.”

And that – yeah. He’d be willing to do an awful lot to keep her looking at him like that, like he was important to something, like she could actually see him. Like he _mattered._

“... fine. Whatever.” But his back was a little straighter, his smirk a little warmer, and when she side-eyed him right back, he might have felt something in his chest tighten. Not that he’d ever admit it.

“We better move, if we don’t want to get stuck in some shitty New Jersey holding cell for hours,” Jonas called out from beside the car, his laptop out and propped on the roof. “Cops, incoming.”

Kate smiled, not looking away. “Get in the car. Come be a hero.”

He went.

\--

“If I’m the big damn hero here, I call shotgun.”

“Hell no, I am not squeezing in between the four lovebirds.”

“Tell you what, Eli. _You_ drive, and Kate can sit on my lap.”

“Very funny.”

 

**2:15 pm, Saturday, 19 th Precinct, NYC:**

“Doctor Reid?” An officer stuck his head around the door, and Reid looked up. “We’ve got a phone call, from some kid calling himself Thomas Shepherd. He wants to speak to the FBI. We’ve already had a couple of crank calls today – kids, screwing around – but this sounds legit.”

“Patch him through,” Reid was already on his feet, reaching for the phone that sat at one end of the desk. A button on it started to flash red.

JJ had her cell to her ear already, and she nodded at Reid with her hand over the receiver. “Garcia’s starting a trace. Go.”

It beeped as he reached for it, and he hit the speaker button. The line connected, static and background noise making it difficult to hear at first. There were voices – female and male – having a distant argument, traffic noise, breathing. “Thomas Shepherd?”

“Who wants to know?” The voice on the phone was young, packed full of bravado, taut with nerves.

“My name is Spencer Reid, I’m with the FBI,” Reid began, settling down into the chair closest to the phone. He picked up a pen and turned it over and again, the plastic barrel and metal clip smooth and sharp against the pads of his fingers. “I heard you wanted to speak with us.”

“None of this is about what I want,” Thomas replied, his tone bitter. “ _Spence_.”

_Derision, attempting to grasp on to a semblance of control, he wouldn’t speak at his own hearing, not even in his own defence. Classic issues with abandonment, despite adoption as an very young infant. Approach with kindness._

“But you’re calling in anyway,” Reid replied, tuning out JJ’s presence, Garcia’s monitoring, Burdick entering the room behind him. There was just this conversation, the boy at the other end, and the connection he needed to make. “Thank you for that. We tried to reach you at the group home, and they told us you’d run away. Are you somewhere safe?”

There was a pause, had he mis-stepped already? “Why do you care?” Thomas’ voice cut in. “I’ve been through this before, so cut the crap. You’ll ask me questions, then tell me I’m lying, then arrest me for something I didn’t do. It’s getting old.”

“We know you didn’t have anything to do with the fires, Thomas.” Reid kept his voice even, soothing. Pitching it slightly lower would convey authority and security, but that would be the wrong move here. Higher, then, higher and a little more colloquial, form a bond of equal understanding. Eminently feasible. “I’m talking to you now, no bullshit. And I know you’re not going to lie to me. Not when you took the trouble to call _us_.”

“Tommy. It’s Tommy. And I didn’t have a whole lot of choice about that,” Thomas laughed darkly. “Have you spent more than five consecutive minutes with these idiots before? They’re enough to drive a guy to hard drugs.”

“You’re with Billy and Teddy?” Reid asked, dimly aware of movement behind him, Burdick and JJ paying rapt attention, gestures and murmured conversations. “Who else is with you?”

“Buffy and the fucking Scooby gang, that’s who,” Thomas snorted. “They told me about Teddy’s mom. That I’m your only witness. And now you’re saying that you’ll believe me, but that’s such _shit_.” He paused, then continued, a little more steadily. “You know my birth-mother’s a head case, right? Full-steam ahead to crazytown. Maybe I didn’t see anything. Maybe I won’t be able to remember anything, even when I try. Maybe it was all in my head after all.” His voice twisted at the end, sign of emotional distress, an attempt at control.

_Wide range of causes for base diagnosis of ‘psychosis’ makes studies difficult, but 25 percent of children with one parent diagnosed with bipolar disorder or severe depression will themselves develop some form of clinical depression. Twin studies show 76 percent correlation between depressive episodes in monozygotic examples._

_Estimates of heritability of schizophrenia in cases with a first-degree relative with the disease estimated at 6.5 percent._

Reid’s voice was a little shaky when he began; he coughed, took a sip of his cold coffee to chase it back. “It sucks to be afraid of your own mind, doesn’t it? To know that there’s the chance that you’re going to lose the very thing that makes you – you. But what’s worse than that is the people who know. The way they treat you differently. Like you’re a time bomb waiting to go off, like you can’t be trusted or believed.”

“Is this something they teach you at the Academy? How to pretend that you know what other people are thinking?”

“No,” Reid paused. “Well, yes. In that we learn how to read what people aren’t saying, along with what they are. But I don’t need that with you. My mother is a paranoid schizophrenic. And some days I wonder; am I next?” He paused. He heard a shaky intake of breath from the other end, something ragged and harsh and real. 

“I believe you, Tommy. I believe that you know what you saw that night. And that you can remember. _I_ need you to remember.”

“So that you can figure out who to blame when it’s all over?”

“So that we can get the bad guy. Rescue the woman he’s kidnapped. Put some order back into the world.”

There was a long silence, long enough that JJ started making worried faces at him. Reid stayed calm., and watched the time slowly tick up on the clock. Tommy’s voice, when it came, was small and tired. “Just my luck, I get to save the day. What do you need me to do?”

“Are you somewhere quiet?”

“As quiet as it’s going to get.”

“Find somewhere to sit down.” Reid looked down and realized with only slight surprise that he’d disassembled his pen while he’d been talking, laid the pieces out in ascending order of size and mass. “Somewhere where you won’t be distracted. I’m going to walk you through a cognitive interview. It’s a technique that will help you remember.”

“Gimme a sec.” There were footsteps, the voices and traffic noises receded a little, then a huff of breath and a soft thump. “Do it, Dr. Freud.”

“I need you to close your eyes, Tommy. Close your eyes and count your breaths. You’re back in the tree-house on the night of the fire. You went up there after dinner?”

“Yeah. Frank was on my case again. I went up there to hang out and wait until he’d cooled off. I didn’t feel like going through the ‘ungrateful wretch vs. the devoted dad’ show again.”

“Don’t think about that,” Reid guided him away, tried to find the rhythm in his speech that would bring Tommy down into his own head. It was harder to do this remotely, when he couldn’t pick up any physical cues, but at least he could go by his voice. “Picture the space around you. Remember the feel of the floor underneath you, the smell of the air. Was it cold?”

The flow of this was easier now, Tommy’s replies softer, almost dreamlike, as he followed Reid’s lead down into the darkness. None of it was unexpected, none of it different from what Reid had pieced together from the reports, the transcript of his hearing, and the evidence still in storage.

Until the sounds of footsteps on the path below.

“A neighbour, maybe, someone walking a dog.”

“Do you hear a dog, Tommy?”

“No. No leash, no barking. But who else would be out so late?”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

And then again, a few minutes later. “They’re awake, someone’s awake in the house. Frank probably knows I’m missing.”

“Is he looking for you?”

“It’s hard to tell – there’s a lot of banging. He doesn’t usually bang around this much. It’s weird.”

And, “there’s fire, oh god, the house is on fire, and it’s fast, I don’t know what could make fire travel so fast.”

“What are you doing?”

“Rolling over, I’m on my feet. They’re inside the house.”

“Who are, Tommy?”

“My mom and dad! I have to get them out.”

“What are you doing?”

“Jumping out the door, I grab the rope ladder but my feet miss the rung, I’m sliding down the ropes and fuck my hands are all jacked up – I think I peeled off some skin, and it hurts. But they’re outside and the house is on fire but they’re outside. They’re not exactly happy to see me.”

“Don’t think about that; think about what you saw. When you were leaving the tree-house, Tommy. I need you to think about that moment. What did you see?”

“My house. On fire.”

“What else. What else is around you? Anything you don’t recognize, anything that doesn’t belong.”

“There’s a van. It’s driving away. Who drives around in a work van in the middle of the night?”

“What colour is it?”

“Can’t tell. Light. Yellow? No-one paints a van yellow. It’s not white. Grey. It’s grey and the back windows aren’t windows.”

“Can you see the license plate? What state is it from?”

“Garden state. Local. I saw it, but only for a second, I can’t remember.”

“Try again. You’re in the treehouse. You’re in the door, looking at the van. You know it’s out of place, you know you’ve never seen it there before. Your mind knows it’s important. You looked at the plate. Look at the plate again, Tommy. What does it say?”

“G. GH47. That’s all. That’s all I can see because the living room window breaks and I’m sliding down the ladder and- fuck.” His voice changed and he was rattled, the bravado a tattered edge stretched thin over panic.

Reid sagged back in his chair, caught sight of Burdick’s back as the officer left the room with paper in his hand. There was breathing at the other end of the line; Tommy hadn’t disconnected. He had to bring him out, keep him stable, bring him home. “You did very well, Tommy, thank you. We’re going to run a trace on that van, and we’re going to find him. Where are you now?“

“We’re coming back,” came the noncommittal answer, but it was unnecessary. Garcia would have traced the call by now, there would be someone on the way to bring the kids home safe and out of Whitter’s reach.

“That’s good,” Reid breathed out, and he meant it. The picture of Thomas stared down at him from the evidence board, his stare accusatory. “I’m looking forward to meeting you in person.”

“You’re probably the only one who is.” And the phone disconnected abruptly.

Reid pitched forward and jammed his elbows into the surface of the conference table and rested his forehead in his hands for a minute. He breathed. He focussed. He got back to work. 

 

**2:25 pm, Saturday, New Jersey:**

The long drive was killing Morgan slowly, and he resisted the urge to drum his fingers on the dashboard or flip through the radio stations. At least Hotch had the driving to take some of his concentration; all Derek had was the building anticipation. So when his phone rang, and Garcia’s name popped up, it was all he could do not to actually cheer out loud at the interruption.

“Hit me, Garcia,” Morgan opened without preamble. “I’m in the car with Hotch, and you’re on speaker.” He hit the button to make that true, and glanced at Hotch, his hands tight on the steering wheel.

“Hello, sir,” Garcia began, strain in her voice. “We’ve got a location on Whitter’s van. A tip places him in the parking lot of a Motel 6 in Newark. You’re the closest to it, and I’m sending the address to your phones now. New Jersey PD are en route and will meet you there.”

That surge was half relief and half pure adrenaline, and Morgan couldn’t help the grin that lit up his face. “I love you, sweet thing.”

“I accept payment in chocolate, wine and backrubs,” she replied as she hung up, a smile back in her voice.

Their phones beeped at the same time, and Morgan glanced down to read off the address and zoom in on the map. “Next exit, Hotch, and hang a right. We’re about five minutes away.”

 

**2:30 pm, Saturday, Newark, New Jersey:**

“Do we seriously look that much alike?” Tommy asked, and Teddy was finding it very difficult to pay attention to another round of the same. The car cornered, pulled on to the overpass, and Teddy tightened his arms around Billy’s waist. This was it; they’d found Tommy, he’d given his report, and now the restlessness was back. He was unmoored, an anxious coil winding tighter and tighter in his gut, and if they didn’t get back or hear something new soon, he was going to go insane.

“You really do,” Cassie was replying as Teddy tuned back in, a little. “It’s kind of uncanny.”

But Tommy had gone pale, and Tommy’s knuckles were clenching white and Tommy pointed out the window and said “There. Fuck, Kate, that’s him. That’s the van.”

And Teddy looked. They were looking down off the highway at a crap-tastic little motel, nestled in behind the main road. A long balcony ran along the second story, a parking lot in front with numbered spaces. A few of the spots had cars in them, and in the first spot (213, Teddy could see from his vantage point), a grey panel van.

“Kate,” Teddy urged; hell, he’d beg if he had to, but she was already checking her mirrors and changing lanes, picking up speed and peeling down the off-ramp like all the hounds of hell were on their tail.

He heard sirens in the distance, getting closer, and he hoped and prayed that they were actually coming this way.

He had his seatbelt off before the car stopped, the door open _(despite Billy’s surprised yelp)_ as she slowed, was jumping out _(sorry, Billy)_ and already running for the fire escape stairs leading to the balcony before Kate parked. Sirens were wailing behind them, and Billy was yelling his name.

That got him looking back, a single glance over his shoulder, to see a uniformed officer grabbing Billy by the arm to stop him from following any further.

“Teddy!”

“Ted Altman!”

“Kid, stop!” And he should, he knew he should, but the door was right there in front of him and he lock was broken, and he was in too deep now to reconsider.

He pushed the door open and charged inside.

“Mom!” Any motion inside the dingy motel room had ceased when he’d slammed his way in. Teddy’s mother was kneeling on the damp carpet, her hands bound behind her back with duct tape. Some guy Teddy had never seen before was standing over her, between Teddy and his mom, a lighter flicked open in his hand, and her skin was covered in red marks. The air was acrid, alcohol-tinged.

“Teddy, no! Get out of here, baby – go!”

She struggled against the tape, getting halfway from her knees to her feet, before the older guy struck her. His hand made contact with a brutal slap and she rocked backwards, sprawling.

“You’re here.” Her abductor turned, seemed to forget all about Teddy’s mom, held his hands out and up like he was going to close the distance between them, grab Teddy’s face. He had blond hair, Teddy noted distantly, blond hair and a jaw like Teddy’s, and he was staring at Teddy like he was something fucking good to eat. “I should have known you’d come for her; such a brave young man.” Something coiled in his voice, thick and slimy and _off,_ and he was still holding the lighter in his fist. He flicked it closed with a sharp gesture.

He had crazy eyes.

Teddy recoiled, and the man took a step closer, still babbling. It was hard to make sense of what he was saying, all the words merging together into sounds like ‘Anelle’ and ‘so much like her’ and ‘Derek, my boy, my nephew, my blood-‘

“My name isn’t Derek,” Teddy spread his hands – keep calm, right? Show you’re not a threat, that he had the wrong people, maybe he’d let them walk out of here… “My name’s Ted. Ted Altman. I think you made a mistake, dude-”

Movement flickered in the corner of his eye, out the window.

“The mistake was hers,” Crazy Eyes replied, gesturing at Sarah. She was sprawled where she had fallen, wet stains on the knees of her jeans. “For taking you, for never telling you, for denying you your true family!”

_No seriously, what the fuck?_

“Mom?”

She shook her head, blonde hair sticking to her face where it was wet from tears. “Teddy, honey, I’m so sorry…”

“And for that, she has to be punished. Surely you can understand that, my clever boy,” Crazy Eyes crooned, never missing a beat. “She will be punished for her crimes and then we can be a family. Like we were supposed to be.”

Teddy reeled. “You’re out of your mind!” She was hurt, he’d burned her, had pushed the lighter under her arms and face and there were streaks of tears and his mom cried sometimes, sure, but not like this.

“There was never a right time to tell you,” Sarah managed, and with that, Teddy felt the ground beneath him start to crumble. ( _Later, later, deal with it later, once we’re home and safe-_ )

One thing was sure – Crazy Eyes wanted _him_. More movement, sounds of feet outside, the door was only half-closed. “Take me, then,” he declared, swallowing against the lump in his throat. “I’m the one you want, right? Derek? I’ll go with you, wherever you want, if you just let my mom go.”

“Teddy, no!” Sarah cried, lunging up onto her knees and all but pitching forward on her face. “You can’t! He’ll hurt you again, that was why I took you, to protect you from him, from them! Don’t go with him, baby; don’t worry about me. I’ll be alright.”

She stared into his eyes, pleading, begging Teddy to understand, and Crazy Eyes flicked the lighter open, and-

The door opened again behind Teddy.

Crazy Eyes held the lighter up, the flame burning high.

“Kurt Whitter?”

It was Agent Hotchner from the police station, Agent Morgan close behind him, in black vests and guns out and holy hell, Teddy was both so happy to see them and so terrified that this had been too fucked up to fix, and he froze in place, caught between the balcony door and the bed, his mom and Crazy Ey- _Kurt­ –_ on the other side.

“Stand down, Kurt,” Hotchner was saying again, moving in closer. Morgan never took his eyes off of Kurt, but he slid in front of Teddy, walling him off. “You found him, you did,” Hotchner intoned, nodding. “It’s over now.”

Kurt shook his head. “It can never be over, Agent; not until Lenore James has paid for her crimes, for killing Anelle-“

_What?_

“Anelle died in a car accident, Kurt, you know that,” Morgan kept his gun up, never wavering. “Miss James had nothing to do with that.”

“ _She stole Anelle’s baby!”_ Kurt howled, hand trembling around the lighter.

“And now everyone knows it,” Hotchner soothed, making a tiny gesture at his thigh. Morgan moved over a step. “Everyone knows it, and we have the evidence that you gathered, and we can do this properly. Everyone will know, Kurt. They’ll know that you honoured Anelle’s memory. They’ll hear how you found her son.”

Kurt’s eyes were fixed on Teddy, and Teddy couldn’t look away. Blue, like his, wild and panicked, and then-

Calm. So very calm.

“I did, didn’t I?” Kurt replied, with a small smile. “And now we can all be together.”

He let go of the lighter.

Two shots exploded in the small room.

Flame erupted in a _woosh_ and all the air was sucked out of the room and Teddy was hit by something – no, someone – a heavy shoulder and force behind it. The world went sideways and started to go black and the carpet was wet under his face and it smelled like burning and the fire was _blue_ and everywhere around him. And somewhere in the distance he heard Billy screaming his name. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein things are resolved and options presented.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love and chocolate to my betas, Tsu (formerly known as moonbrightnites), roane and frogy. All errors are mine.

  **Chapter 7:**

**2:40 pm, Saturday, Newark, New Jersey:**

Morgan’s ears rang from Hotch’s double-tap and his nose filled with acrid smoke. He scrambled to his feet, his shoulder sore where he’d crashed into Teddy Altman. The room was engulfed in flame, the yellow and orange laced with blue. The door to the balcony stood open only a few steps away.

Teddy was on his feet milliseconds after Morgan, lunging across the bed to try and reach his mother. The fire rolled thick between them. Hotch crooked his arm over his face to shield himself from the heat and smoke as he vaulted Whitter’s prone form. Morgan grabbed Teddy, pulled him back, wrapped an arm around his shoulders to drag him out the door.

“Medic, we need a medic up here,” Morgan yelled into his radio as he hit fresh air, the sodden carpet giving way to the steel of the balcony under his feet. “We’ve got two down, agent inside.”

Teddy tried to break free from his hold, to push his way back in to the room. “Let. Me. **_Go_**!” Teddy yelled, wrenching his arm free from Morgan’s grip. He only managed a single step. Morgan grabbed him, and as he wrestled his arm behind his back a belch of flame from the doorway sent them both reeling.

“I have to help her!”

“Hotch!” Where the hell was he? Come on, man, come on- “You can’t go in there, kid!” Morgan pushed Teddy off into the waiting arms of a local officer. “Get him clear,” he ordered befowe turning to dive back into the flame and the fire. Sirens below, that would be the fire department, too slow, too late. He was going to go in and drag Hotch out by the scruff of his neck, fire or no fire.

He made it to the threshold just as a pair of dark shapes tumbled out. Hotch was on his feet but coughing. The shape in his arms was only barely recognizable as female, clothing black and fused to the flesh beneath. They made it down the stairs together, small flames dying out under Morgan’s hands as he helped Hotch lay her down, red embers smouldering at the edges of the fabric, her hair. She let out a shuddering breath. Morgan was holding his.

Hands tugged at him and he let the paramedics pull him back. Breathe, refocus. They had this. What was _his_ next job?

The firefighters were taking over the scene now, one carrying the limp body of Kurt Whitter out of the room, the rest unspooling hoses and running past in heavy booted feet.

Hotch was being harassed by a medic even as he waved off the oxygen mask she was trying – and failing – to get over his face.

Police were holding motel guests and staff back behind a line at the edge of the parking lot, a pack of teens clustered there. Morgan recognized all of their faces, if only from the pictures Garcia had sent. He flagged down one of the officers in the cordon and pointed them out. “Get these kids over to the side, make sure they don’t leave.”

Paramedics had Sarah Altman, but from the set of their faces and the way they weren’t moving at top speed to load her onto the gurney, there wasn’t a whole lot of hope there.

And Ted Altman; Teddy was standing, statue-tall and still while a paramedic checked him over, his eyes ever-fixed on the medical team working by the ambulance.

The lead EMS shook her head. She called it, signed the clipboard, peeled off her gloves.

Teddy held on a breath more. He collapsed to his knees, staring mutely.

Behind the police barricade, Billy Kaplan lost his ever-loving mind.

Hotch said something to the officer holding Kaplan back and the cop released him. Billy tore across the parking lot, kicking up pebbles as he went, and flung himself around Teddy, buried his face in Teddy’s shoulder. Teddy’s arms came up around Billy and they clung to each other, Teddy’s fingers clutching desperately at Billy’s shirt.

Morgan’s throat caught with a tickle that had been there since he’d hauled Altman out of the fire, and he coughed to shake it loose.

“You need to go and get yourself checked out.” Hotch nodded toward the ambulance.

“Just as soon as you do, Hotch,” he replied, with a pointed look at the scorch marks on Hotch’s sleeves, the little dark hairs on his forearms that had curled back against his skin from the heat, the little tremor of a cough that he was doing his best to suppress.

One of the paramedics zipped a long black body bag closed, and Hotch turned, just a quarter-step, so that it was no longer in his field of vision. Hotch raised an eyebrow at Morgan. Morgan met his gaze.

“They’re waiting for us back at the precinct,” Hotch changed the subject. “New Jersey PD is organizing transportation for the kids, and they’ll meet us there. Altman and Kaplan will ride with us.”

Morgan shook his head, scrubbed his hand along the back of his neck. “What’s he going to do now, Hotch? The only mother he ever knew is dead. His biological parents died before he even knew they existed. Everything he thought he knew about himself, hell, even his _name_ , was a lie. That’s one hell of a stressor.”

“Kids are resilient. He’ll adapt, because he has to.” Hotch looked up and over Morgan’s shoulder, and a small smile might have flickered in his eyes for a moment. “And I don’t think he’s lost quite everything.”

Morgan looked over at them one more time, following Hotch’s glance. The boys looked impossibly small and young, somehow, curled around and in and over each other. “Maybe not,” Morgan shook his head, though. What was real and good and right at seventeen – that could change a hell of a lot by the time you hit twenty. It usually did. “Let’s hope it’s enough.”

 

**3:45 pm, Saturday, 19 th Precinct, NYC:**

“Their parents – or representatives – have started to show up,” JJ tucked the stack of folders under her arm, Prentiss and Morgan trailing her back through the station. She glanced down the hallway toward reception as she spoke, watched Kate Bishop argue with the lawyer that her father had sent in lieu of coming himself.

Morgan nodded. “What about the Altman kid?”

“He’s not physically hurt beyond some bruises and scratches, but he’s still in shock, I think,” JJ frowned. The young man had tried to be a hero, and ended up a witness to something no-one should ever have to watch.

Thank god for Morgan; at least from what he’d told them, he’d managed to keep Teddy away from the worst of it. Especially after. No-one needed those images seared into their mind. It was bad enough when it was ‘only’ pictures of victims, and not someone you loved.

“Doctor Kaplan’s sitting with him. And we’re waiting to hear back from Social Services about Tom Shepherd.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” Prentiss frowned. “They’re stretched thin everywhere, and a runaway seventeen year old isn’t going to be on the top of anyone’s priority list.”

“You’re _not_ my father! Don’t even _pretend_ that you care!” The shout came from the bullpen, a young girl’s voice, and JJ stopped short, turned to look.

“Hold up,” Morgan gestured to Prentiss, lifted his chin in a quick nod in the direction of Officer Burdick’s desk. He was standing, hands raised in front of him, his stepdaughter Cassie jabbing a finger at him. She barely missed connecting with his chest and he took a step forward into her personal space, looming over her short frame.

“If you don’t want me to act like a parent, Cassie, fine. Let me act like a _cop._ By all rights, you and your friends should be up on serious charges right now! We’ll start with obstruction of justice, interfering in a police investigation, interfering in a federal investigation, negligent _homicide_ -“

“Hey, hey now-“ Morgan took a step in, but Burdick ignored the new arrivals. His colleagues were heads-down, for the most part, ignoring the fight. JJ got the feeling that this sort of scene wasn’t all that unusual around here.

“All we did was help a friend, Blake. If you want to send us to jail for that, then go ahead!” Cassie’s voice was shrill, tears in her eyes as she began to verge on the hysterical. One hand was balled up like a fist, but she didn’t look like she was going to take a swing.

Burdick growled, his hands gesturing faster in front of him as he let himself be baited. “You’re just like your father! Arrogant, reckless, stubborn, never _thinking_ first!”

JJ was moving across the room before she could formulate a proper plan, the venom between the two spiralling further out of control the longer she hesitated. She’d thought that maybe Burdick would have been able to de-escalate things, but he was as caught up in the moment as his step-daughter, the adrenaline and near-misses of the afternoon (near-misses for the kids, anyway) caught up with everyone.

“My father was a hero!”

“Scott Lang was a thrill junkie, and his recklessness got people _killed_. What if you had gotten hurt on your little joyride? What do you think your mother would have done?”

“Enough!” JJ pitched her voice loud enough to carry, and it sliced through the thick tension. Burdick and Cassie both stopped and stared at her, and JJ drew herself up to her full height. “Do you really think this is the right time or place?” She dropped her volume back to conversational and stared up at Burdick. She didn’t get quite close enough to push herself between them, but close enough so that she could if she had to. Burdick didn’t seem the type to strike out physically, at least not at a kid, and not with everyone in the room watching, but the signal itself would be clear.

Even more of an audience had gathered. Jonas Pym was standing in the doorway of the bullpen with his father, the older man’s hand tight on the nape of Jonas’ neck in a gesture both controlling and protective. Jonas looked furious, his hands balled into fists. Eli Bradley, who had been sitting in a chair against the wall, was standing as well, straining forward, ready – she’d put money on it – to jump in and start laying waste if JJ hadn’t interrupted first.  

Burdick’s eyes flared and for a minute it looked like he was about to turn his anger and frustration onto JJ. She held her ground, didn’t step back, and the heat in his expression faded as he struggled for control of his temper.

“They’re just kids, man.” Morgan was by Burdick’s side now, even and calm. “They were trying to do the right thing.”   

Cassie was close to tears, her breathing quick and shallow, and JJ edged back a little so she was standing closer to the girl while Morgan talked Burdick down. “That’s why we have rules,” Burdick bit off, not looking at Morgan. “So that well-meaning kids trying to ‘do the right thing’ don’t get other people killed.”

“That wasn’t our fault?” Cassie’s voice trembled and upticked when she spoke. She was tough and proud, yes, but in that moment JJ remembered how very young she was. “That wasn’t our fault,” she repeated, with more confidence. “If we hadn’t found Tommy, and made him call you – we _tried_ , Blake! But your guys hung up on Jonas, and you didn’t answer the phone when I called, and we _tried._ But we were the only ones left. And so we did it. Ourselves. And we helped.” She glanced at JJ, her lower lip trembling, but only a little, and her chin high. “You know we did.”

Blake pulled out his phone, scrolled through something and stared at the screen for a moment, before lowering his head with a dark frown.

JJ hesitated, torn. Her immediate impulse was to reassure, to soothe; to agree and tell Cassie that it would be okay. That their impulsive race to help a friend had been useful and decent and _right._

But.

But they’d ignored common sense, and the law, placed Ted Altman in a position where he’d had to watch his mother _die_. And there was no way to roll back the clock and find out if Whitter could have been talked down. If Teddy hadn’t been there, would Hotch and Morgan have been able to do their jobs? Could they have been taking Sarah Altman home right now, shaken but ultimately unharmed?

(And if they had, then what? A trial for Whitter, a trial for Lenore James? What would have happened to the Altmans then? But at least she would have been alive.)

“What Kurt Whitter did to Mrs. Altman wasn’t your fault.” JJ could say that much, at least. “He killed a lot of people before today. There was nothing you could have done to stop him.” Cassie met her eyes, nodded. 

“Cass-“ Jonas was calling to her from the doorway, and Cassie turned, gave him a tight smile.

“Come on,” Morgan was still talking to Blake, who scowled in response.

JJ looked from one to the other, caught Morgan’s eye and nodded. Prentiss had retreated back to talk to Hotch in the hallway, their hands moving and flickering in and out of the shadow as Prentiss filled him in.

“Let’s go,” JJ relaxed her posture deliberately, gave Burdick a gentle, professional smile. “Take a minute, we’ll go get a cup of coffee. Morgan can stay with the kids for a bit, while everyone cools down.” Morgan’s eyebrow flickered up at her when she made the offer, but he leaned back against Burdick’s desk, and nodded once.

She heard Morgan’s voice pick up where she’d left off as JJ followed Burdick away, using that careful tone he had when he was trying not to sound like he was impressed. “Yeah, you helped. And it was brave. I’m not saying it was smart, because that was one of the _dumbest_ stunts I’ve ever seen pulled. But it was brave.”

 

**4:15 pm, Saturday, 19 th Precinct, NYC:**

The shouting had stopped, but the hectic activity in the police station had not. Everywhere except around Tommy Shepherd. He’d given his statement and then been stuck in a chair in the corner, told ‘wait here, someone will be coming for you shortly.’

Only, no-one had.

What a shock.

The door was right _there_. In half a minute he could be out, on the street again, free to-

To do what?

 Kate had asked, back at the house, and he hadn’t come up with a real answer. But anywhere would be better than here. Better than sitting on a hard plastic chair in a police station, everyone passing by knowing that he’d been there for ages, would be there for hours still.

Because nobody was coming.

The door at the end of the hall opened.

He was FBI – not the hopeless suit with no taste for sarcasm who had done his interview, but a skinny guy in an argyle vest who must have gotten beat up a lot as a kid.

Guys like that ended up being the sneaky ones you _really_ had to watch out for.

Tommy let go of the straps of his backpack, kicked it surreptitiously back under his chair like he hadn’t been a ten-second countdown away from bolting.

“You’re Thomas Shepherd, aren’t you?” the agent asked.

“Tommy,” Tommy answered. “Yeah. Who are you?” He put his swagger on, looked FBI-guy straight in the eye, refused to flinch. Let _him_ be the one to look away.

He didn’t.

“My name is Spencer Reid. I talked to you on the phone earlier today.”

“Oh, yeah, hey, sure.” Tommy leaned back, draped his arms over the chairs to either side of him as casually as he could muster. “I remember. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. Help us get the bad guy. Save the cheerleader, save the world.’ Nice job your guys did on the rescue there, _Spence_. My faith in the system has been restored.”

Tommy braced himself for the yelling. Waited for the usual lines about respect, and tone, and ‘do you know how much trouble you’re in, young man.’

It didn’t come. Agent Reid just gave him an odd little frown. “The ‘system’ is nowhere near perfect,” Reid admitted. “Because a system is just people, and people make mistakes.” Tommy flinched.

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Tommy recovered, rolled his eyes. _What’cha gonna do with me now, Spencer Reid? I’m not buying what you’re trying to sell._

Reid seemed to take that as a challenge. “You didn’t run away from the transition house because you were unhappy there.” 

His stare went deeper than skin, and Tommy felt like a bug under glass. He should have made that break for the door when he had the chance.

“You ran away because you were starting to get too comfortable. You were starting to like people there, to consider letting them in, and that scared you.” Reid turned so that he was sitting forward on the chair, not quite facing Tommy anymore, but still holding him with that peel-you-open kind of look. “Up until now, the people you trusted have been the ones to betray you. You ran away because it was less painful than waiting for this new group to reject you, first.”

“Sure. Because I get my kicks out of abandoning people,” Tommy scoffed, pushed back, tried to get back to a place where Reid was uncertain around _him._

Reid’s calm didn’t waiver. “No, you don’t. But it makes you feel safer. Like your tree house did at home.” Tommy hated him. A lot. “You were tucked away, out of sight, but close enough for your parents to find you if they wanted to.”

Tommy stopped, a tight punch to the gut pushing the air out of his lungs. He saw a glint in Reid’s eye and knew that he’d noticed.

“It must have hurt when they didn’t come looking for you, the night of the fire.” Reid was poking at him with words again, looking for another weak spot.

Tommy looked away. ”You guys talked to Frank and Mary.”

“My colleagues did, yes.”

Tommy stared at his hands, at his knees as he pulled them up and into him, at the wall. At everything but the headshrinker next to him, pretending to be just another FBI agent. He swallowed, now. Felt every one of his seventeen – _almost eighteen –_ years, and not a day older.

He had a mother who hadn’t wanted to get better; not even to keep him. He had parents who only wanted him until they got to know him. He’d burned his bridges with Miss Campbell and the others at the home; they wouldn’t have him back now.

“Whatever,” he said, crossing his arms in front of himself and forcing his muscles, tight and tense, to relax back into the chair, all casual-like. “No matter what they saw or didn’t see, Frank was never going to believe me.”

Reid shifted in his chair, all gangly limbs and awkward. He didn’t say anything.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how that makes me _feel_?” Tommy sneered. _Go away. Go away and stop picking through my head. You’re_ wrong _._

“Do you want me to ask you about your feelings?” Reid looked like a woebegone spaniel when he cocked his head like that, brushed his floppy hair away from his eyes with a flutter.

“I don’t have feelings. Doesn’t that make me one of your sociopaths? You may as well arrest me now and save yourself the trouble of tracking me down again later.”

Reid just looked at him. There was a moment where Tommy was sure that he was going to laugh, but then he was all quiet and… _well-meaning_. And that was worse. “You don’t display any of the standard indicators of sociopathy,” Reid said instead. “You have feelings. You simply don’t like them. And that makes you very normal.”

He had no snappy answer to that, and he sat still for a moment. Anything he said in denial would get twisted around into another data point. Agreeing meant he’d be expected to _share_ his _inner world_ and that was not happening.

He sat in silence. Reid sat quietly beside him. After a few minutes, the time ticking by on the large round wall clock so loud that it hurt, Tommy spoke. “How long before it stops hurting?” His voice sounded small and thin even to his own ears, but it was too late to take it back.

Reid frowned. “I can’t really say. But hurting can be a good sign.”

“Oh yeah. It’s fantastic.”

“It means you’re still alive. And the bad guys didn’t win.”

The chair was digging into his back and legs. Tommy shifted in the seat, got both feet back on the floor. Better. “Save the kumbaya speeches for Billy and the rest of the Power Rangers, Agent Reid. I don’t do inspirational hugging.”

One of the other FBI guys – Old Mafia Guy, this time – stuck his head around the corner and gestured to Reid. Reid stood, looked thoughtful, then patted down about five of his pockets before he pulled a business card out of one of them. He was leaving, then.

“Take my card, just – just in case you feel like talking. Or, sitting. Sitting works. Call me, whenever.”

“Don’t hold your breath.” Tommy turned his head.

But Reid kept holding out the card. And to make him go away, Tommy took it.

He tucked it in his pocket. _There weren’t any garbage cans nearby; that’s all._ And he zippered the pocket closed.

 

**7:00 pm, Saturday, 19 th Precinct, NYC:**

The thrum of the jet’s engines was soothing, a white noise that helped the decompression phase of any case. Rossi signed his name to the bottom of the form in the folder and flipped the cover closed. Aaron Hotchner was sitting and staring at his own paperwork in the seat across from him, eyes glazed, not registering anything outside of his own head. Rossi shifted deliberately and dropped the folder on the small table between them, directly in what should have been Aaron’s line of sight.

Aaron looked up, his focus snapping back, and his eyebrow flickered once.

“So what’s going to happen to those kids now?” Rossi asked. Conversation about the case was safe, and better than letting Aaron dwell on anything personal right now.

“Thomas Shepherd and Ted Altman are both close to eighteen,” Hotch replied. “They’d age out of the system long before they could get any kind of concrete placement. It’s not worth the paperwork, at this point.”

“And?” Rossi raised his own eyebrow in return. There was no way Hotch – or JJ, for that matter – would leave things so unresolved.

“The Kaplans have offered to take both boys in, at least long enough for them to finish high school. Doctor Kaplan’s already put in a petition for temporary guardianship.”

Laughter erupted from the group at the back of the plane. Rossi heard Morgan groan, followed immediately by Prentiss gloating. “That’s not a bad deal.” Rossi said, satisfied. It wasn’t the tidiest of ways to clean up loose ends, but it was a damn sight better than many got.

Hotch grimaced, his brow furrowing slightly before he replied. “That’s alright for Ted Altman; he’s been close to the Kaplan family for a while now. Shepherd’s a different story. He may have a genetic link, but realistically, they’re complete strangers.”

“True. But on the other hand, Doctor Kaplan has training in dealing with the kinds of issues they’re likely to face. They know Thomas’ history, both criminal and psychological, and they’re taking him in anyway. You can’t underestimate the value of that kind of acceptance. I have a feeling they’ll be fine.”

Another explosion of laughter from the back of the plane caught Rossi’s attention, as did Morgan rising to his feet. “No way, Reid; you’re not impartial. We need Hotch or Rossi up in here to settle this.”

Morgan began to make his way up toward the front of the jet. Rossi watched him, as Aaron shook his head one last time. “They’ve got a long way to go before those kids will be ‘fine.’ For their sakes, Dave, I hope you’re right.”

 

**4:30 pm, Friday, Downtown Manhattan, NY:**

“No, you go in the middle. You’re not pulling a runner again.” Kate pushed Tommy into the booth at the diner, intent on trapping him behind the scratched and stained formica table. He made a show of stumbling, flailing his arms and grabbing at her. Eli followed, ended up on one side of the booth with Tommy, Kate somehow in the middle, Billy and Teddy sprawled on the other side.

Ted looked like hell, had been pale and withdrawn and quiet for the past week. He was supposed to go back to school on Monday for the first time since – _since_. It was a crapshoot as to whether he was going to make it, as far as Eli could figure.

“I’m not hungry.” Teddy was shaking his head at whatever Billy had been suggesting, pushing away the plate that the waitress had set in front of them.

“Seriously. You have to eat something other than cheese strings sooner or later, or you’re going to wake up one day with a feeding tube inserted. My mother’s that devious and connected.”

“Yeah,” Tommy snorted, “because the guy’s at risk of wasting away to nothing over there.” And he reached for Kate’s onion rings.

Kate jabbed at his wandering hand with her fork. Tommy yanked it away before she actually made contact.

Eli smothered a laugh behind his fist. He wasn’t sure, for starters, how Tommy would take it. As much as he looked like Billy (or a vaguely punked-out version of Billy, with the bleached hair) and how tempting it was to forget and _treat_ him like Billy, he was a completely different person.

“Hey, guys.” Eli looked up at the sound of Cassie’s voice to see her walking in to the diner, Jonas trailing behind her. She stopped at their table and dove for Teddy first. He let out a mild ‘oof’ of surprise as she wrapped her arms around him – and the half of Billy that was practically fused to Teddy’s side – and gave him a hug.

“Hey, you,” Kate ruffled Cassie’s hair and yanked on Tommy’s arm to pull him further around the table. Jonas and Cassie packed themselves into the booth. That left Tommy squished against Kate – which he was obviously enjoying, damn it – and Eli squashed between Jonas and Tommy. Which he was not enjoying nearly as much.

Between the crush and the movement, and Jonas’ stupid pointy elbows, and Kate looping a protective arm around Teddy, it took Eli a moment to notice that his fries were missing.

No, not missing. They were in front of Teddy now, and Tommy was distracting him, engaging Kate in a fencing duel with their silverware. Teddy was watching, hand moving between the plate and his mouth entirely on autopilot, and his eyes looked a little more alive.

“So are you not grounded anymore?” Kate was asking Cassie, and she tossed her long black hair back over her shoulder.

“Are you kidding?” Cassie groaned. “I’m grounded until I’m thirty. I’m actually at the library right now.”

“That’s the spirit!” Tommy lifted a water glass and clinked it against the one that the waitress had just set down in front of Cassie.

Jonas shuffled over a little bit to give Eli room to breathe. “And Officer Burdick thought _I_ was the bad influence.”

“I can’t stay long,” Cassie interrupted Jonas. “But I’m here now!”

“How’s school going?” Jonas asked Tommy, leaning forward to see around Cassie and Eli. “You transferred, right?”

“Yeah,” Tommy looked up, seeming surprised at the attention. He nodded anyway. “It means I’m going to have to stare at that every day in the cafeteria-“ he jerked his thumb at Billy and Teddy, Teddy’s hands wrapped around Billy’s, and Billy’s head resting on his shoulder. “But so far the teachers suck slightly less than my last school.” He shrugged, eyes flickering to the door.

He watched the door, and Eli watched him, but Tommy made no move to run.

\--

The air outside was colder when they left than it had been when Eli had arrived at the diner. A few snowflakes drifted lazily downward through the darkening afternoon sky.

“Fries?” Eli pinned Tommy with a look, before he and Billy and Teddy could take off for the bus, and home.

“He needed them more than you,” Tommy fired back, hands in his pockets and tension behind his fake smile.

“Yeah, whatever, Robin Hood,” Eli snorted. Billy might still be on the fence about him, and if Tommy didn’t stop hitting on Kate he was likely to find himself maimed (by Kate, not by Eli), but overall, the guy wasn’t bad. He was starting to grow on him, anyway.

“You owe me fries next week,” Eli said, pulled his backpack on over his shoulder, smiled.

“Assuming I’m still around by then.”

He was.

 

**Epilogue:**

Six weeks later, Dr. Reid gets a phone call. It lasts 83 seconds.

Subsequent calls are much longer.

\--

Eight years after that, an envelope arrives at Quantico, addressed to the BAU. It lands on Dave Rossi’s desk, and he opens it. The card inside is made of heavy cream cardstock, the Thank You on the front engraved and touched with silver. The photograph mounted inside makes Rossi’s day.

The kids from New York are all older now, of course, the short, neat beard that Billy sports one sign of that new maturity. The matching tuxedos that he and Teddy are wearing are a little inappropriate for a daytime wedding, but who's going to tell that to two grooms who look so happy? They're toasting the unseen photographer with flutes of champagne, their friends beside them.

A small diamond sits on Cassie’s left ring finger, a slim steel band on the littlest finger of the hand that Jonas has snug around her waist. Eli, Tommy and Kate stand guard on either side of Billy and Teddy, Tommy further away from the others. He still smirks rather than smiles, but his eyes are softer now. His hair is still bleached white.

The handwritten note scrawled below the picture reads ‘ _As you can see, we’re doing just fine._ ’ A second, neater hand beneath that has written, ‘ _Come by NYC sometime; we’ve still got half the cake in the freezer.’_

Rossi smiles, and sets the card aside. Later that day, he’ll put it up where everyone will see it. Later still, Morgan will scan it and send the file to Prentiss, now far off in London.

His phone rings. It’s reception, and he glances at the clock on the wall when he recognizes the voice.

 “Agent Rossi? Agent Shepherd is here for his orientation.” Right on time.

And Rossi smiles. “Inform Doctor Reid. And let Tom know that we’ll be right down.”

_History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. – Maya Angelou_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all she wrote! Thank you so much for reading and commenting and sticking with me on this ride. I know I originally said this would be nine parts, but I got to the end and realized that it worked fine to do the last two parts in one, and so why make people wait just because of an arbitrary chapter decision way back when?
> 
> So, run-ons aside, we're done here. Thank you again for sticking with me!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Stained in the Blood: Alternate scene / Chapter 6](https://archiveofourown.org/works/585830) by [Ardatli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardatli/pseuds/Ardatli)




End file.
